MAJOR KINK SITE FETLIFE FORCED
TO CENSOR CONTENT
We received news today originally written January 24 th ) that Fetlife.com, a cornerstone of the global kink
community, has been forced to remove vast amounts of content in order to stay in business.
My book Porn Panic! Published last year, warns of an imminent attack on sexual freedom and free speech.
These things don’t exist in a vacuum: they are proxies for liberties that have been taken for granted in the
western world for decades. The sexual expression I defend isn’t that important in its own right: what’s
important is that sexual expression is the stone on which wannabe dictators sharpen their knives.
Now, with the authoritarian Trump administration taking power, and the promise of Internet censorship
coming to the UK this year, there can be little doubt where things are going. Only a couple of weeks
ago, Backpage.com were bullied into closing down its adult services advertising in the United States.
Now, the assault on Fetlife confirms the direction of travel. Hold onto your hats, because this is going to get
very very rough, very very fast.
John Baku @ Fetlife posts:
Changes by JohnBaku
I have a lot to apologize for; I apologize for the cryptic announcement I made last Tuesday. I apologize for
the deletion of 100s of groups and 1,000s of fetishes without any warning, let alone sufficient notice.
I apologize for not making this announcement earlier and leaving everyone in the dark, and most
importantly, I apologize for letting many of you down.
I wish we could have done things differently, but even upon reflection, I believe we did what we had to do to
protect the community and FetLife with the information we had when we made each decision along the
way.
Before making any decisions, we consulted with multiple parties.
We consulted with the team, partners, financial institutions, the NCSF (National Coalition for Sexual
Freedom), the FSC (Free Speech Coalition), lawyers, and anyone else we thought might have insight for us.
So, why did we make the announcement last Tuesday? Why did we remove some of the content we
removed over the last 3-4 days? And, why didn’t we delete some of the content a lot sooner?
Everything falls under one of three categorie