Paulita Paupel, who runs the European chapter of the adult industry trade organization Coalition for Free Speech, says the repression is having a disturbing effect on people and their ability to share content online. “People are fleeing the country,” Paupel says. “Most of the big content creators have already moved to other European countries, mainly Austria, Switzerland and Cyprus.” Others have changed their marketing strategies to avoid Twitter (which has had an impact on how much money they can make), and people new to the industry may be put off starting a career, Paupel says. “This is mainly for LGBTQI+ and BIPOC creators.”

The Internet is, of course, awash with pornography – from Reddit, Snapchat and Twitter to OnlyFans, PornHub and xVideos – with millions of people around the world involved in this industry. On a global scale, this is a big business, bringing in billions of dollars annually. While pornography is being persecuted around the world, Germany seems to have a particularly strong enforcement in the Western world, despite the fact that one of the largest consumers of pornography.

“Germany has been the most aggressive in its suppression of free speech,” says Mike Stabile, spokesman for the American Free Speech Coalition. “I think Germany has been the most aggressive in its pursuit, both in terms of the scope of its laws and in terms of enforcing them.”

AI surveillance

Since 2019, Germany’s media regulators have been developing and then using an artificial intelligence system to detect online content that may violate the country’s laws. The artificial intelligence system called KIVI was developed by the North Rhine-Westphalia media department together with Private company in Berlinand is currently used by all media outlets throughout Germany.

KIVI is touted as being able to scan public messages across seven social networks and messaging apps, including Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, Telegram, and VK (the Russian version of Facebook), as well as websites on the open web. Facebook and Instagram Metas that prohibit nudity are not currently crawled. According to North Rhine-Westphalia tool description, it can check 10,000 pages per day. Shortly after the authorities began using KIVI, they said that detection by the authorities had ” skyrocketed “.

A spokesman for the North Rhine-Westphalia media authority says authorities have identified nearly 5,000 “violations” since 2021. The system looks for problematic content by looking for predefined keywords and links in German, and authorities say it uses a combination of image recognition and text recognition to detect “positive” results.

Ella Jakubowska, senior policy adviser at civil rights nonprofit European Digital Rights (EDRi), says people’s rights are at risk when big tech companies or governments moderate content. “But the idea that government agencies control what we do and what we don’t see on the Internet seems very disturbing in itself,” Jakubowska says.

KIVI looks for several types of content, including political extremism and Holocaust denial, violence and pornography. However, porn “infringements” top the list, with 1,944 incidents recorded in the past two years, according to figures provided by the NRW media. The spokesperson says the system flags potential violations of laws, and then human investigators look at the results and decide whether action should be taken. “KIVI protects employees from sudden and unexpected exposure to stressful content,” says Plass from the Berlin administration.

In another embarrassing development for new Twitter boss Elon Musk, lawsuits released Friday reveal that parts of the social networking site’s source code — the underlying programming that makes Twitter possible — have been leaked online. reports the New York Times.

According to the lawsuits, Twitter claimed copyright infringement by trying to remove the offending code from the Github collaborative programming network where it was hosted. Although the code was taken down on the same day, details of how long the code had been left open were not available, nor was the extent or depth of the leak. As part of the takedown request, reminiscent of Raytheon’s famous – unsuccessful – attempt at court-sanctioned doxing, Twitter has also asked the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California to order Github to reveal the identity of the user who posted the code. and those who went and downloaded it.

V New York Times reports that, according to sources within the company involved in an internal investigation into the leak, Twitter executives strongly suspect it is the work of a disgruntled employee who left “within the past year.” Coincidentally, Elon Musk bought Twitter last October for a mind-blowing $44 billion price tag and proceeded to lay off and otherwise lose 80 percent of the company’s employees, rather than the 75 percent everyone feared Musk would take ahead of his purchase.

The executive director who spoke to New York Times are primarily concerned that revelations derived from stolen code could amplify future hacking efforts, either revealing new exploits or allowing attackers to gain access to Twitter user data. If the page’s increasingly temperamental functionality wasn’t enough to send the site’s user base on the run, who weren’t already deterred by the resurgence of a scam and white nationalist site after Elon’s takeover, wouldn’t the threat of a direct hack be the last straw for advertisers and users?

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