Newsletter

Newsletter #1—August 2018

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Protecting children by upholding the rights and freedoms of all

Prostasia officially launches this Wednesday

As one of Prostasia Foundation's first members or followers, congratulations and welcome to the first newsletter of an organization that you helped form. If it wasn't for people like you, who feel that our society's approach to child protection is too often both harmful and ineffective, there wouldn't be any call for an organization like Prostasia.

In the course of our crowdfunding, as we reached out into communities that had been hurt by laws like FOSTA, we discovered that there were lots of people like you. And people like us, too. Because we are not an organization founded by movie stars or billionaires. We are researchers, activists, sex workers, parents, kinksters, counselors, Internet users, artists, and child sexual abuse survivors. We are Prostasia.

And this coming Wednesday, we celebrate. Come and join us if you can, at San Francisco's world famous Center for Sex and Culture, for an evening of music, food, drink, entertaining speeches, and networking. If you have donated to Prostasia before, then you can get in for free—but please do make sure that you RSVP on our website, so that we know you're coming!

News

FOSTA—THE ANTI-SEX WORK LAW

Prostasia Foundation was formed one week after President Trump signed FOSTA into law. Although the law was originally sold as a solution to child sex trafficking, in fact it has made it more difficult to catch commercial sex traffickers, while putting adult sex workers in peril, and censoring the Internet.

Today FOSTA law is under constitutional challenge. David Greene from the Electronic Frontier Foundation is one of the lawyers leading the legal team challenging FOSTA in court will be speaking at our launch event next Wednesday. And although Prostasia isn't a party to the lawsuit, we are planning to file an amicus curiae brief in support of the plaintiffs once the case reaches the D.C. Circuit Court.

CREEPER—THE ANTI-SEX TOY LAW

The CREEPER Act can't exactly be called polarizing, because most people instinctively support this bill, which would ban sex dolls that have "features that resemble those of a minor." But both scientists and civil liberties activists are aligned in calling for caution. Scientists question whether the would save any real children from harm, or whether it might in fact have the opposite effect. Prostasia is seeking to raise funds for research to answer this important question.

Meanwhile civil liberties activists and sex-positive community representatives worry that the government should not be allowed to regulate the kinds of sex toys that adults use in private by themselves or with other consulting adults, noting that radical activists are already asking for a broader ban on all sex toys shaped like the human body.

CREEPER sailed through the House of Representatives in June, but your letters in opposition may have helped stall it on its way to the Senate.

PARTNERSHIPS WITH INTERNET PLATFORMS

We are currently in discussion with a number of well-known Internet platforms about partnering with them on online child protection initiatives. We've already announced that Microsoft would be partnering with us in holding a Multi-stakeholder Roundtable on Sexual Content, Internet Platforms, and Child Protection. This week we received a minor setback in those plans, in that our proposal to hold one phase of that roundtable at this year's Internet Governance Forum was turned down. However, we are actively investigating other options.

Meanwhile we are also raising money for a Internet platform review to be published in 2019, to independently analyze and rate the transparency and accountability practices of Internet platforms and agencies that are engaged in content moderation and censorship, including the removal of unlawful images of children, but also other content related to child abuse and its prevention.

Some platforms are keen to work with us in this regard, citing our independence, our balance, and our expertise. In fact, advising a major Internet platform on child protection issues was what brought some of Prostasia's founders together, and we will have some exciting announcements about new partnerships with platforms in the near future.

However, others have rejected engaging with expert groups like ours to receive independent expert advice advice on child protection issues. Most notably the gaming chat platform Discord, whom we and other experts tried to reach out to about their censorship of a child abuse prevention forum, caved to popular pressure last month rather than taking an evidence-based approach.

Recent blog posts

Helping Young Adolescents to Combat Sexual Grooming

From the way that it is often described, as a slow, methodical, and intentional process, the sexual grooming of children often sounds like some kind of black magic. By following…