The War on Adult Content / Mikandi Blog

Written by A.V. Flox. Originally published on Mikandi Blog.

“Recent months have marked a sharp increase in the types of businesses that are closing their doors to adult content creators. March saw a number of mainstream payment processors and crowdfunding sites take a staunch position against adult performers, even when their use of these services had nothing to do with creating adult content. In April, Chase closed the bank accounts of a number of adult performers and their partners, including those of performers who were not using their accounts for business. Last month, MailChimp briefly suspended the account of an adult boutique over an innocuous newsletter rounding up sexy apps currently on the mobile market. And now Google is taking further steps to make it harder for adult businesses to make a profit.

Earlier this month, Google sent out a message to adult sites using AdWords to announce that the search giant will no longer accept ads that lead to adult sites.

“Beginning in the coming weeks, we’ll no longer accept ads that promote graphic depictions of sexual acts including, but not limited to, hardcore pornography; graphic sexual acts including sex acts such as masturbation; genital, anal, and oral sexual activity,” the e-mail from the Google AdWords Team read. “When we make this change, Google will disapprove all ads and sites that are identified as being in violation of our revised policy. Our system identified your account as potentially affected by this policy change. We ask that you make any necessary changes to your ads and sites to comply so that your campaigns can continue to run.”

The e-mail included a link to the Google Advertising Policy log, which added, “Under this policy, sexually explicit content will be prohibited, and guidelines will be clarified regarding promotion of other adult content. The change will affect all countries. We made this decision as an effort to continually improve users’ experiences with AdWords.”

Further communications from the Google AdWords Team last week reveal this change will impact not only sites that feature pornographic visuals, but any sites that contain language referring to sexual acts, something that will impact educators in the field of human sexuality.”

You can read the rest of the article here and be sure to check out the rest of our #sextechbiz articles while you’re at it!