Porn makes approximately $97 billion a year but it is still an extremely censored industry in social media. Lustery joins Amorelie in #timetouncover to shine a light on this ongoing battle.   

Lustery Joins Amorelie's #TimetoUncover Campaign

Working with the representation of sex in the online space means having the communities we've built to explore and bring awareness on sexuality, sex positivity, and gender identity, all while giving sex performers the mic, constantly endangered. This is why we've decided to join Amorelie on their new campaign: 

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We try to be authentic to our mission of staying rough while being careful about every word we use to save our skin. We make porn but can't write down the word without putting a corn in the middle of it, or a slash, or using any weird symbols not to call it by its real name: porn. Pornography. Pornographic content. Explicit, dirty sex made for you with love by sexy couples from all over the world. Today porn remains a taboo despite being an industry worth approximately $97 billion a year. 

Social media platforms like Meta, TikTok, YouTube, and email marketing platforms like Mailchimp regularly update their community guidelines. Still, one thing always remains the same: they leave too much room for interpretation regarding sex-related content. Meta says that "it's never OK to attack anyone based on their race, ethnicity, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, disabilities". At the same time, Meta effectively attacks those using its platforms to encourage meaningful conversations and educational insights on diverse sexualities, genders, ethnicities, bodies, and abilities by banning our content. Some of the mechanisms meant to protect users are being used against many of them. 

We have to censor ourselves so as not to be silenced by online platforms that want to sanitize their reputation – our daily tasks include covering female nipples and censoring any sex or genital-related words moved by the fear of having our accounts suddenly shut down, hindering our ability to freely share educational content we invest significant time and effort into. Some accounts and content are being unfairly banished without any further explanations or the possibility of appeal – and it's no easy task to communicate with TikTok or Meta when you've been banned.

We face many limitations on all our social platforms daily and the constant possibility of our content being rejected or banned. These uncertain one-fits-all guidelines saying that videos can't include "too much" intimacy currently rule the space we share online. We cannot show what we do the way we want it as we get shadowbanned on Instagram, and, as Lustery, we are not even allowed to mention our company name on TikTok. What platforms like ours dare to do is celebrate sex and relationships in their diversity by showing porn that’s freed from any shame and norm, based on enthusiastic consent and authentic connection. At 

, we show a curated smut collection of real couples' sex lives, homemade porn videos of ‘ordinary’ people in their own houses and bedrooms, taking the film out of the secrecy where anything related to sex has always been hidden.

We are given this illusion that anybody has a right to talk and share as long as it is harmless to other people. However, when you use your platforms to bring awareness about sexuality and sexual health, you'll be punished for questioning and defying the foundational heteronormative bias about sex that rule the online and offline space. We share our work and connect with other professionals in our communities thanks to these platforms like anybody else does in other industries. But we don't have the same rights that other brands and individuals have.

Censorship targets already marginalised groups

Social media dictate rules of acceptability while showing evident bias and being responsible for inequalities – not everyone who posts "sexually suggestive" content is threatened to have their profiles permanently banned from one day to the other. Sexual-based censorship on social media systematically targets specific groups – it affects sex workers, transgender and BIPOC creators, sex educators, accounts of female and LGBTQ+ individuals, artists, writers, brands, activists, and journalists more than their white, cis-male counterparts from different corners of the world. It seems that censorship comes from the need to hold off what certain bodies question when they themselves show to be unapologetically and explicitly open about sex in a shared space, whether it's online or offline – what can't be shown online is what tragically still can't be openly seen or talked about in most places in the offline world.

What social media giants can't accept: people like sex

People like to say that sex work is the oldest profession on Earth, and that might be true. And if still today, people look for and are willing to pay for sexual products and services, it's because they like sex. They want sex in their own right. They are looking for some sexual inspiration or to solve their doubts about their sexual health, kinky fantasies, or couples’ rituals of pleasure. The growth in online content that tackles sex, sex education, erotic performance and art, and sex work in different ways shows that people are willing to express themselves through their sexuality and see others doing it free of judgment.

People can flag other users’ content on social media if they don’t like it for online security and community protection – "It's for the children's safety," they say. But we shouldn’t conflate what some people can’t stand with what everybody can or cannot see. We might not be able to do that much against big companies’ interests and government policies. However, we still can try and expand our community of people who want to live sex unapologetically, roughly, wildly, freely, and mindfully… all while knowing the tricks of “how to play it safe” with the combination of “sexually suggestive” pics, clips, and captions when posting on social media. 

We need more people to know about the restrictions we face in our daily work to be our allies in advocating for more information and online resources about different bodies and different ways of having sex, alone and together. We claim our right to bring education and joyful sex to our followers without risking losing them. We want to say anything from slap me and spank me to cum on my face, from homemade threesomes and foursomes to loud orgasms, from kinky sex challenges and blow jobs to naughty little sluts, to naughty asses to horny quickies. We want to tell and see all bodies as erotic pieces of art, raw and unfiltered.

As creators, performers, producers, and fans, we reclaim the power to rule over what we share and see in our feeds rather than letting platforms do so for us. We want people wishing to see specific content to be able to see it and people who create it to keep doing the fantastic work they do for them. We want to keep offering a space for couples to share their most intimate moments with a like-minded community on Lustery and for sex experts to keep sharing resources and peer education through Lustery POV.

Join #TimToUncover and dare to visualise this: how would we communicate and show what we do to our communities if those affected by this online censorship get a seat at the table to design the policies that rule their social media experience?