Facebook's fall from grace is continuing apace, but with more than 2 billion monthly active users, it remains the world's most popular social media website and a staple of online life for many. So when Facebook changes its Community Guidelines to outlaw certain types of speech, this has immediate consequences on real people. As such we have to question its latest move to limit sexual speech on the platform, which we consider both misguided and draconian.

The changes, which quietly took place on October 15, were revealed to Prostasia Foundation when we met with Facebook on November 27 in Berlin, although they have hit the news only this week, coming on the heels of Tumblr's announcement that it would also be banning adult content, with effect from December 17. It was intrusive enough when Tumblr decided that visual depictions of nudity and sex were no longer acceptable on its platform, but Facebook's new guidelines go even further and some are downright creepy. The following is just a small excerpt of what Facebook feels entitled to tell you not to engage in:

Implicit sexual solicitation, which is defined as mention of a sexual act along with at least one of the following suggestive elements:

• Vague suggestive statements such as "looking for a good time tonight"
• Sexualised slang
• Sexual hints such as mention of sexual roles, positions or fetish scenarios
• Content (hand-drawn, digital or real-world art) that may depict explicit sexual activity or suggestively posed person(s).
  

As with most censorship of sexual speech, Tumblr and Facebook have sought to package their respective changes as addressing serious sexual harms such as sex trafficking and child pornography. But the reality is that rather than making a serious effort to cleanse their websites of such material in a targeted way, they have caved to the demands of advertisers and pressure groups (Facebook says it took advice from "third-party organizations that specialize in women's and children's safety issues") to impose a blanket ban on lawful speech about sex. The anti-sex trafficking law FOSTA is also a factor leading platforms to take a more repressive, sex-negative stance.

Tumblr and Facebook have essentially decided that undermining the rights of consenting adults to express themselves and their sexuality (consensually) in all its forms is the best way to avoid culpability when their websites are used for evil. We believe otherwise; that censorship of lawful discussion of sex on social media won't protect children, but will harm both people of all ages and sexualities, and that it is minorities who will be harmed the most.

Following our visit to Facebook's Berlin office last month and our participation in the Freedom Online Coalition meeting that same week, we had hope that the Internet industry was coming to terms with its real and vested interest in investing in better screening mechanisms for unlawful content online, while upholding freedom of expression. But Tumblr and Facebook's latest decisions, just days apart, suggest that instead they have found it more commercially expedient to turn a blind eye to their users' rights.

Unintended consequences are sure to flow from these poor decisions. By diverting enforcement resources away from the content that everyone agrees must be eliminated—unlawful images and sexual grooming of children—and towards the suppression of lawful speech, we are taking the pressure off actual predators. Internet companies can be our powerful allies both in the fight for child protection, and for upholding freedom of speech… if only they will rise to this challenge.