Paulita Paupel, who heads the European branch of the adult industry trade body, the Free Speech Coalition, says the crackdown is having worrying effects on people and their ability to share content online. “People are fleeing the country,” Paupel says. “Most of the big content creators have already changed their residence to other European countries, mainly Austria, Switzerland and Cyprus.” Others have changed their marketing strategies to avoid Twitter (which impacts how much money they can make), and newcomers to the industry may be discouraged from starting a career, Paupel says. “This primarily affects LGBTQI+ and BIPOC creators.”
The internet is, of course, awash with porn – from Reddit, Snapchat and Twitter to OnlyFans, PornHub and xVideos – with millions of people around the world involved in the industry. Globally, it’s a big business, generating billions of dollars every year. While there are crackdowns on pornography all over the world, Germany seems to have a particularly strong brand of enforcement in the Western world, despite being one of the biggest consumers of pornography.
“Germany has been the most aggressive in suppressing speech,” says Mike Stabile, spokesperson for the US-based Free Speech Coalition. “I think Germany has been the most aggressive in its pursuit, both in terms of the scope of its laws, but also in terms of enforcement.”
AI Monitoring
Since 2019, German 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 Authority, with a Private company based in Berlinand is now used by all media authorities in Germany.
KIVI is said to be capable of analyzing public posts on seven social media and messaging apps, including Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, Telegram and VK (the Russian version of Facebook), as well as websites on the open internet. Meta’s Facebook and Instagram accounts, which prohibit nudity, are currently not scanned. According to North Rhine-Westphalia description of the tool, it can check 10,000 pages per day. Shortly after the authority started using KIVI, she said the authority’s detections “skyrocketed.”
The spokesperson for the North Rhine-Westphalia Media Authority claims that since 2021 the authority has detected nearly 5,000 “violations”. The system searches for problematic content by searching for predetermined German keywords and links, and the authority says it uses a combination of image recognition and text recognition to detect “positive” results.
Ella Jakubowska, senior policy adviser at the nonprofit European Digital Rights (EDRi), says people’s human rights are at risk when Big Tech companies or governments handle content moderation. “But the idea of state entities controlling what we do and don’t see online seems very concerning in itself,” says Jakubowska.
KIVI searches for multiple types of content, including political extremism and Holocaust denial, violence, and pornography. However, pornography “violations” top the list, with 1,944 incidents reported in the past two years, according to figures shared by the North Rhine-Westphalia Media Authority. The spokesperson says the system flags potential violations of laws, and then human investigators review the results and decide whether action should be taken. “KIVI protects employees from sudden and unexpected exposure to stressful content,” says Plass of the Berlin authority.
