SB 255 has passed the California Senate’s Public Safety Committee, which means it will be up for a vote within the next couple of weeks.

Here’s the text from the bill:

This bill would make it a misdemeanor for any person who, with the intent to cause substantial emotional distress or humiliation to another person, by means of an electronic communication device, and without consent of the other person, electronically distributes, publishes, emails, hyperlinks, or makes available for downloading nude images of the other person along with personal identifying information of the other person.

Those found guilty of violating the law would be subject to up to one year in jail and/or a fine of $1,000. The bill broadly describes “electronic communication device” as cellphones, computers, any internet-connected device, and actual web pages as well.

“There has been a recent increase in what is commonly called ‘revenge porn,’ and this bill seeks to discourage the act,” says the bill’s sponsor Anthony Cannella.

“People who post or text pictures that are meant to be private as a way to seek revenge are reprehensible. Right now, there is no tool for law enforcement to protect the victims. Too many have had their lives upended because of an action of another that they trusted. This is a common sense bill that clamps down on those who exploit intimacy and trust for revenge or personal gain.”

Finding a place on the moral outskirts of pornography, so-called revenge porn sites host images and videos of so-called “exes.” The point of such sites is that men are exacting revenge on ex-girlfriends by posting their private sexual communications online for the world to see.

We’ve seen revenge porn sites targeted in the past, sued for invasion of privacy, public disclosure of private facts, and such. Most of the time, these sites are able to stand behind the famous section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which protects websites from being liable for user-submitted content. This new bill would give officials more leeway to target individual offenders.

By the language of this bill, however, it wouldn’t just be revenge porn sites that would fall under its purview. Anyone that sends their buddies a text of their ex-girlfriend naked, or uploads such images to an internet forum like reddit could be targeted as violators.

“It is unfortunate that we have to create legislation to protect individuals from the misuse of technology,” said Christine Ward, executive director of Crime Victims Action Alliance. “I applaud Senator Cannella for his efforts to prevent future victimization in California.”

ORIGINAL ARTICLE: This post is NSFW

Facebook – you’re sending some seriously mixed messages here.

After yanking such highly-offensive content as artwork of Bea Arthur’s breasts, a New Yorker cartoon featuring the most rudimentary depiction of breasts that could ever exist, elbows that appear to resemble breasts, and various photos of women engaged in breastfeeding, Facebook has decided that a page for one of India’s most notorious red-light districts is a-ok.

The page, Sonagachi (very NSFW), features graphic photos of breasts, vaginas, penises, oral sex, and even a series of photos apparently depicting a girl losing her virginity.

It makes no point to hide what it is, listing this in the “about” section:

Sonagachi is the largest red-light district in Kolkata, India and one of the largest in Asia. It is an area with several hundred multi-story brothels and estimated 11,000 sex workers

The page hasn’t posted in months, but it is still filled with postings from others – some soliciting prostitutes. Plus, all of those photos…

Blogger Liz Boltz Ranfield first spotted the page and called on Facebook to do something about it. She, along with a writer from Jezebel (and others), all reported the content to Facebook for removal.

To their shock, Facebook replied with a “thanks but we can’t find any reason to remove it” email:

Hi,

Thanks for your recent report of a potential violation on Facebook. After reviewing your report, we were not able to confirm that the specific page you reported violates Facebook’s Statement of Rights and Responsibilities.

Learn more about what we do and don’t allow by reviewing the Facebook Community Standards: https://www.facebook.com/communitystandards.

Thanks,
Viki

Interesting. Considering that the page features graphic nudity, sexual acts, and possibly sexual depictions of minors, this seems like an odd choice.

Facebook’s terms of service clearly state that…

“You will not post content that: is hate speech, threatening, or pornographic; incites violence; or contains nudity or graphic or gratuitous violence,” and that “You will not use Facebook to do anything unlawful, misleading, malicious, or discriminatory.”

Seems like there’s plenty here to prompt the shuttering of the page.

Just so we can understand this – this is ok:

As is this:

But this deserved to be yanked:

(It was later reinstated with Facebook’s apology – but still, the content moderators felt they had reason to pull this at some point)

In the past, many of these content-removal controversies could be attributed to two simple facts about Facebook: First, their content moderation is mostly outsourced, and second, there are billions of photos going up on Facebook every week. That means that it’s almost impossible to police all the content without some screw-ups.

But this is different. This is Facebook’s content moderation being notified (multiple times) about content that is the epitome of what Facebook should be banning (per their terms of service), and the company is choosing to leave it up. It’s especially odd considering Facebook’s recent move to get tougher on harmful content after being pressured by various women’s groups

I fully expect Facebook to eventually see the error in this judgement and yank the page. It’s inevitable with this much backlash. But, once again, we have an example of Facebook’s bad content moderation system at work. Something’s gotta change.

Pinterest has explicitly banned sexual content, nudity, and even partial nudity. It’s right there in the Acceptable Use Policy. “You agree not to post User Content that is sexually explicit or contains nudity, partial nudity or pornography.” If you search a term like “sex” or “nude” on Pinterest, you’re greeted with this message:

Reminder: Pinterest does not allow nudity. Pinning or repinning photographs displaying breasts, buttocks or genitalia may result in the termination of your Pinterest account.

Though that sounds pretty straightforward, well, it’s not. Sure, Pinterest says that they do not allow nudity or pornography. Yet there’s plenty of porn and more “tasteful” nudity on Pinterest. See? See? (NSFW, obviously).

Now, it looks like Pinterest is taking a proactive step (at the behest of users) to make sure that the nudity that exists on the site is an acceptable type of nudity – artistic nudity.

“Pinterest is about expressing your passions and people are passionate about art and that may include nudes,” Pinterest told the Financial Times. “So we’re going to try to accommodate that.”

Gizmodo received another quote from Pinterest spokesman Barry Schnitt.

“Pinners have asked us for a policy on nudity that makes a distinction between works of art and things like pornography. A change like that poses a lot of questions. We’re working our way through those questions but we don’t have any additional details to offer just yet.”

It sounds like Pinterest wants to avoid the mess that Facebook’s gotten in as of late. Mainly, the banning of not only art featuring exposed breasts, breastfeeding photos, and cartoon boobs, but even photos that resemble breasts but turn out to be completely innocuous.

Pinterest has to face it: Their UI is great for art and photos. And if the people want tasteful nudes, well, the people should get tasteful nudes. Lest they run off to a place where it won’t be persecuted. Not that Pinterest has done a great job of enforcing their policy up until this point anyway. Moving forward, Pinterest is probably going to have a problem making that distinction between artistic nudity and porny nudity. It’ll be interesting to see how that plays out.

To do so, the company has put out a new cartoon to explain:

Some screen cap highlights:

Yep. Weird.

Fear not, Tumblr users. Your porn isn’t going anywhere.

For the first time since the acquisition announcement, Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer has made a clear decree on her company’s role in censoring content – mainly that they have none. During Yahoo’s new Flickr event Monday night in NYC, Mayer was asked directly whether she will restrict content on Tumblr.

“No, we won’t,” she said. “It’s the nature of user-generated content.”

She continued on to say that it’s important to have community tool like “NSFW” tags that Tumblr already has in place. There you go, folks, that’s about as definitive as you’re going to get.

Before those remarks, Mayer had been a little more vague about Tumblr’s porny bits.

“The width and breadth of content on Tumblr is what’s exciting and has allowed it to reach more users.” she said during a conference call Monday morning. She also said that Yahoo would have to make use of good ad targeting, to assuage any concerns from future advertisers. And there will be more ads inside Tumblr, that’s for sure.

“We promise not to screw it up. Tumblr is incredibly special and has a great thing going. We will operate Tumblr independently,” said Mayer during her announcement.

But just how much porn is on Tumblr? A lot. We know that. But until now, we’ve never had any real figures. Data from SimilarGroup, obtained by TechCrunch, suggests that more than 11% of Tumblr’s top 200,000 domains are very NSFW.

The analysis looked at the 200,000 most-popular blogs on Tumblr and found that 22,775 would be considered “adult.” That works out to 11.4%. Yes, Marissa Mayer just bought a network that’s more than 1/10th porn.

SimilarGroup also looked at traffic to said adult Tumblr blogs and found that they account for 16.6% of Tumblr’s traffic. Not only that, but just over 22% of referral traffic to Tumblr comes from adult websites. 8% of outbound Tumblr referrals lead straight to porn.

Tumblr has a porn empire. Is that going to be a problem for Yahoo?

Maybe, but Mayer isn’t suggesting that quite yet.

“The width and breadth of content on Tumblr is what’s exciting and has allowed it to reach more users,” said Mayer this morning when asked about Tumblr’s “not-brand-safe” content (read: porn).

In order to deal with it, Mayer said that Yahoo would need to have good targeting for ads. Maybe that will be the strategy going forward – smart ad targeting that will make sure that the porny bits stay away from the non-porny bits. But this study proves that adult content isn’t just a fringe element of Tumblr’s massive blog network – it’s a big part of it.

If you are unfamiliar with Tumblr, know this: there is a lot of porn on Tumblr – artsy nude content, straight up porn, pretty much all colors of the NSFW rainbow. It makes up a significant part of the Tumblr landscape, and without it, Tumblr wouldn’t really be Tumblr. Some Tumblr users are concerned that Yahoo will waltz in and attempt to change all of that. Before the acquisition went official, some analysts worried that Tumblr’s NSFW underbelly would be an issue for the folks at Yahoo who were considering the deal.

But it wasn’t. Now that the acquisition is official, it’s looking like Yahoo is committed to keeping Tumblr running as is, and that the porn problem, well, isn’t really a problem. During her conference call to discuss the deal, Mayer had this to say when asked about all of the “not-brand-safe” content out there on Tumblr.

“The width and breadth of content on Tumblr is what’s exciting and has allowed it to reach more users.”

And when it comes to possible concerns from advertisers? Well, Mayer noted that Yahoo will just have to have good targeting. Mayer said that Yahoo is going to put more ads inside the Tumblr feed, so we know it’s coming. But Yahoo can pick and choose where they throw those ads, and can steer clear of any content that may concern potential clients.

“We promise not to screw it up. Tumblr is incredibly special and has a great thing going. We will operate Tumblr independently. David Karp will remain CEO. The product roadmap, their team, their wit and irreverence will all remain the same as will their mission to empower creators to make their best work and get it in front of the audience they deserve. Yahoo! will help Tumblr get even better, faster,” said Mayer in her announcement.

And in his, Tumblr CEO David Karp said that “before touching on how awesome this is, let me try to allay any concerns: We’re not turning purple. Our headquarters isn’t moving. Our team isn’t changing. Our roadmap isn’t changing. And our mission – to empower creators to make their best work and get it in front of the audience they deserve – certainly isn’t changing.”

That sounds like Yahoo is going to adopt a fairly hands-off approach to the Tumblr, and that’s good news for Tumblr users. Sure, people lie and things change, but as of right now it appears that Yahoo isn’t that concerned about all of those naughty parts on Tumblr. Carry on.

I’m sure many parents can relate to this scenario: You’re browsing the web and you happen upon a saved site, or maybe check your history. And there it is – a porn link that you didn’t access. What do you do? At what age do you think you have to start worrying about this?

Well, according to a new study, it’s a lot earlier than you think. Apparently, kids are starting to look at porn by the time they reach the age of six. Yes, six.

The study comes from internet security and antivirus software provider Bitdefender, who released the results to USA Today. Bitdefender used data compiled from its various parental controls services alongside a survey of over 19,000 parents worldwide.

The survey found that kids start watching porn as early as 6, and are “flirting” on the internet by the ripe old age of 8.

Social media use is also starting earlier – 17% of kids had an account on some social networking site by the age of 10 and 25% had one by the age of 12.

“Kids nowadays are acting like young adults online — just give them an Internet-connected device, and they will find a way to things parents would like to ban forever,” says Bitdefender Chief Security Strategist Catalin Cosoi.

Of course, parents are the key. Both in limiting what young kids see on the internet, as well as having important conversations about both the good and the bad that exists on the web.

And it looks that those conversations need to start happening early. Very early.

And that’s the simple fact about porn. It is a drug. Well, at least it acts like a drug on your brain. AsapSCIENCE‘s newest three-minute video tackles the very real problem of pornography addiction. If you find yourself in a vicious porn-watching cycle where real life never seems to measure up to what you’re imagining in your head, well, this is the reason.

“For the first time, a massive data set of 10,000 porn stars has been extracted from the world’s largest database of adult films and performers. I’ve spent the last six months analyzing it to discover the truth about what the average performer looks like, what they do on film, and how their role has evolved over the last forty years,” he says on his site.

And thus begins a truly fascinating look into the world of porn – its demographics, characteristics, trends, history, and more.

Millward combed through the Internet Adult Film Database, the porny version of the IMDb, which houses records of over 120,000 adult films and over 115,000 adult film actors/actresses. Through careful analysis of a very large sample size, Millward has put together the mother of all porn infographics.

According to his research, the average porn star is a dark-haired caucasian girl from California, measuring 34-24-34 and coming in at 5’5″ and 117 lbs. She has a 34B bra size, probably has a tattoo, and will most likely spend three years in the industry. Over the course of that career, she’ll appear in 19 films. Her name is Nikki Lee.

Check out his handiwork below. There’s a little bit of NSFW content in the graphic, but no NSFW images.

[via Gawker]