Blocked Access: When Pornographers Take Offence

Abstract

Pornographers are traditionally assumed to cause, rather than take to offence, yet porn video aggregator sites, production studios and individual professionals alike have recently engaged in protests against proposed work safety regulation, internet policy and legislative measures connected to sexual equality, especially so in the United States. In many instances, this has involved porn companies protecting their own financial interests whereas the economic rationale has remained less lucid in others. Focusing on moments of pornographers acting out in protest, this chapter examines the political economy of offence connected to contemporary pornography.More specifically, this chapter explores how porn companies, and video aggregator sites in particular, make use of social media visibility to articulate their case, how their forms of protest function as PR, as well as how the shift of porn distribution to online platforms has changed the political stakes that all this involves. I first briefly contextualise the politics of offence connected to pornography before moving on to recent examples of two major video aggregator sites, xHamster and Pornhub, blocking user access as a form of protest, and inquire after the political and economic stakes that such seemingly paradoxical moves involve. This is followed by a discussion of xHamster's and Pornhub's sexual health and social responsibility campaigns as brand building activities in the framework of social media.Pornography occupies an uneasy position within this economy as content that is deemed inappropriate and undesirable in terms of targeted advertising around which the flows of