The internet as we know it wouldn’t exist without sex. From the famous Playboy image used to develop common file formats to the advent of online payment processors, social media, and streaming services, eroticism—and the economies that spring up around it—played a pivotal role in shaping today’s technology.

This is the subject of How Sex Changed the Internet and the Internet Changed Sex, a deep dive into the secret, horny history of the world wide web. In her literary debut, Samantha Cole—a renowned journalist who’s been reporting on the intersection of sex and tech for over a decade—turns her gaze toward the past, and chronicles the way desire has shaped cyberspace since its very beginning: from early bulletin board sites and sexual subcultures, to the online porn industry that made illicit images and videos readily available for free—with or without the consent of their creators.

Over the course of her journalistic career, Cole has witnessed today’s political battlefields take shape. It was through her work that she first encountered Jessica Stoya, who has played an equally pivotal role in defining today’s conversations around sex—from her prolific adult film career, to her advice column for Slate, to her 2018 book of essays Philosophy, Pussycats, and Porn. One of the most-recognized figures in the adult industry, Stoya has written at length about the systemic biases against sex workers for such publications as the New York Times, the New Statesman, and the Guardian, as well as how eroticism reflects and shapes the society we live in. Recently, she appeared in Hot Money, a podcast by the Financial Times that charts the way sex, commerce, and censorship intertwine—with shadowy figures at the helm of Visa and Mastercard ultimately calling the shots about what kind of porn we see online, and even the subjects performers like Stoya are permitted to discuss on OnlyFans. (Hint: Menstruation isn’t one of them.)

The impact of such policies extends far beyond the realm of porn. Despite being embedded in the fabric of our digital world, sexual speech has been all-but-expunged from social media platforms—a side effect of 2018 bills FOSTA-SESTA, which chipped away at Section 230’s free speech protections to the detriment of sex workers and other marginalized communities. Though framed as a bid to end sex trafficking, such laws have proven ineffective in reducing sexual exploitation—because by holding companies accountable for user-posted content, FOSTA-SESTA incentivized social media platforms to crack down not just on problematic sexual materials, but all sexual speech. On TikTok, for instance, users have resorted to codewords like seggs and corn to share sexual education information without activating the censorship tripwire—an issue that poses particular challenges to sex workers and free speech advocates, but should be equally worrying to anyone paying attention.

Here, the two authors and adult industry experts join Document to discuss coming of age online, the battle against erotic censorship, and why we need to talk about fisting now more than ever.

“This stuff is always going to be accessible in one way or another—and we can either realize that or keep pretending that, if there’s enough censorship, it’ll all go away.”

Camille Sojit Pejcha: How old were you when you started using the internet, and what were some formative experiences that defined your time online?

Jessica Stoya: When I first started spending time on the internet, it was a very different, very uncensored place—I remember I got all of my sex ed from the internet, in a very wholesome way.

Samantha Cole: We have this in common; we were both homeschooled, so I didn’t have the opportunity to get a shitty public school sex education. One of my formative experiences on the internet was talking to people who had lots of different gender expressions and sexualities and lifestyles. I was from a small town, and I was forming critical thoughts about people who weren’t in my little bubble—sometimes arguing with them, sometimes agreeing with them. As far as sex, I was pretty scared of everything that was going on online, so I didn’t discover porn till much later.

Jessica: I first saw porn online at age 11. My parents just let me use the computer in the middle of the night as much as I wanted, and I knew how to delete all of the cookies. I just looked at whatever the hell I wanted to. And honestly, that early exposure to the online BDSM community taught me a lot about consent. So, on the one hand, 11 year olds watching porn is a problem, but on the other hand, that access to adult discussions of boundaries really helped me both protect myself, and do less harm as I was having sex with people. I just naturally picked up how to be, like, Hey, what do you like, is this okay? And I applied that to all of it—not just whips and chains and power dynamics, but like, Hey, do you wanna hold hands?

Camille: You mentioned that the internet, in its early days, was more unfiltered; it was also much less centralized than today’s social media exosystem, where a majority of people are interacting through a handful of popular platforms. These days, it feels like there are fewer spaces where one can discuss both sexuality and identity without running afoul of censorship policies. Can you speak a little more on that, and how it impacts the sharing of sexual resources online?

Jessica: Before the Tumblr porn ban, we had this amazing wealth of knowledge about sex and identity and sexual health. That’s where I learned about asexuality; the community pointed me to resources. Tumblr was the place for people to learn and process together. Now, how are we even supposed to get that information out? That’s not going to rise to the top of the Pornhub algorithm.

I was just in Barcelona, where Erika Lust was doing a presentation on censorship online. And she was like, Now, everyone uses codewords to talk about sex on TikTok. We’re having to use words like corn and seggs, resorting to baby language to talk about adult things. That kind of thing is something you touch on in your book, Sam, and it’s only gotten worse since it was published.

“As far as community online, we have two options: echo chambers that we’ve been sorted into by the algorithm, or being exposed to things that we vehemently disagree with.”

Samantha: I remember rushing to get that book filed, because I was like, I can’t keep adding things to this—things keep getting worse and weirder and more complicated on the internet, and I can’t continue to amend the manuscript. Like, when OnlyFans announced it was shutting down adult content, I was like, Wait, I’ve got to include that—so I wrote it in, and by the time I woke up the next morning, they had reversed the decision and were no longer shutting down. I was like, You better get me edits before they flip-flop again. Trying to keep up is just impossible.

All this stuff is very connected in my mind—because the same legislation that goes after sex workers goes after trans people and abortion rights. A lot of really scary things are happening right now, like the way books are being banned in schools.

Camille: It makes me think about how, in your book, you talk about one of the first instances of someone using this ‘save the children’ argument to police sexual content online, yet the reporting underpinning it was completely biased and flawed. And it’s like, we’re having that same conversation with conservative organizations like Exodus Cry, framing all sexual content as abuse.

In the beginning, people had this egalitarian dream of the internet being a liberatory space for sex workers and marginalized folks, but the dangers they were escaping in the real world have been replicated online, since you can no longer be anonymous or speak freely.

Samantha: It does feel like it’s come full circle in a way. It’s like, it was inevitable that the same people who were mad about billboards with sex on them in the ’70s are now mad about stuff that’s happening on the internet. It’s the same mindset, but now it’s just weaponized in a way that actually gets companies like Mastercard and Visa to drop Pornhub.

Jessica: The internet now has split, and it really seems to be exacerbating a lot of social issues. It used to be that we were all in it together, using the internet and stumbling onto things that we may or may not agree with, but in a way that promoted actual discourse. And now it feels like, as far as community online, we have two options: echo chambers that we’ve been sorted into by the algorithm, or being exposed to things that we vehemently disagree with, that are being shoved down our throats. I’m like, This is the worst, because the internet used to be where I went to get away from this.

Camille: I’ve noticed that, on today’s internet, a lot of the issues that have been affecting sex workers for a long time are suddenly starting to impact everyone else—things like shadow banning and suppression of sexual speech, or platforms closing down and forcing a mass migration, or even the concern that people could profit from one’s image without consent via AI. What would you say to the people who are just now joining this conversation?

Jessica: Sex workers have always said that porn is the canary in the coal mine. And I gotta say, we tried to warn you, but the coal mine’s on fire now. We were screaming from the rooftops, but our warnings fell on deaf ears, because whores’ opinions don’t count, and there’s not enough squirting in the world to put it out—so I hope someone has an actual fire hose.

Everyone should read Hannah Arendt and learn the history of fascism. Because we are multiple steps into a repeat of the previous century. If you’re living in America, you need to vote in the primaries. Find the most viable Democratic candidate in your state, and vote. All of these things are crucial now, because we cannot be playing catch-up. We have to have sane people in the government. Because if the US economy tanks, it screws over the whole world. Even if you’re like, I’ll be fine living in this nightmare, think of all these little countries who have very little power on a global scale.

“If sex and porn and all these things are shadow banned, downranked, and deplatformed, how do you even access that information?”

Samantha: I vote on all the big and small things, even though it can feel a bit like rolling a boulder up a hill. But even in the private sector, I think there’s a lot of power in being organized and loud. We saw it happen with the OnlyFans thing—they reversed course on a very fucked-up decision they claimed was coming from the banks. And they fixed it in three days because the Wall Street Journal wrote about it. Suddenly, people got really noisy, really fast—and it proved that you actually can pressure them back into doing the right thing.

Jessica: The Financial Times did a podcast called Hot Money that pretty clearly lays out how Visa and Mastercard have control of these things—so if you care about sex workers, call Visa and be like, Hey, love your cards, but I don’t love your policies. We’d like more transparency about who makes decisions about what is and is not acceptable to process payments for. Because it’s not just where you can use your card—it’s who companies are allowed to do business with.

Samantha: They’re policing morality as banks, and that doesn’t lead anywhere good.

Jessica: Yes. Pornography is explicitly legal in Los Angeles, but when I went to open a business account at Chase a few years ago, they took one check from Manwin—which is what the company behind Pornhub was called then—and two checks from Vice. Five minutes later, they come back, and they can’t open a business account for me. They also won’t tell me why—and I don’t think the problem was Vice. Bank of America and Chase Bank also closed masses of accounts of adult performers and adult industry workers in 2013, as part of Operation Choke Point.

Samantha: It’s absurd that they don’t have to give you any reason, like with social media terms of service—they’re not obligated to name a reason for banning or shadow banning you, because private companies can do whatever they want. It’s so tricky to even report on, because it’s so vague. If sex and porn and all these things are shadow banned, downranked, and deplatformed, how do you even access that information?

Jessica: In the middle of interviews about books, you randomly give public service announcements about how you really shouldn’t try fisting on your own—that’s what I’ve had to resort to. We can reach one asshole; we can save one life with direct action [laughs].

I actually went to brag about the last time I was fisted on OnlyFans, and I couldn’t send a message. So I went on Twitter and I’m like, This is just more evidence that International Fisting Day is more crucial than ever—not only to spread awareness about pleasure, but also about how you can really easily hurt yourself.

“Sex workers have always said that porn is the canary in the coal mine. And I gotta say, we tried to warn you, but the coal mine’s on fire now.”

Samantha: Yeah. Even with the guys who suck their own dicks, there’s a whole harm reduction community full of tutorials about how to stretch properly and work up to it. I hope these never go away, because without them, someone’s gonna slip a disc.

I was reading your column ahead of the call, and thinking about how it’s so rare that you’re able to have such a frank discussion about sex and kink. It also struck me that so many people write in with a variation of the question, Is it okay to feel this way? Am I normal?

Jessica: One of the most beautiful things about the Wild West days of the internet, is it showed us that so much is normal—that whatever it is, there’s porn of it on the internet. I feel really lucky that Slate lets me talk about sex in pretty extreme detail in my advice column. But then, when I go to promote that column on social media, I can’t do the same thing. And all people are doing by removing this stuff from platforms is leaving people without context. One of the questions that just came in for Slate is from a woman in her 70s who has no context for how to have fulfilling sex with a 70-year-old body, because the only information online is about vaginal atrophy. All this censorship makes me think that the goal of the other side—and it does very much feel like the other side right now—is to erase all pleasure and all individuality from the internet.

It’s crazy; you can’t say menstruation on OnlyFans, at least as of a year ago. Because according to Visa and Mastercard’s terms of service, the blood is automatically conflated with violence. And I’m like, Okay, my periods are violent, but it actually feels more violent to have to shove a sea sponge in there after douching with cold water. And who wants to have sex after they’ve just shoved a bunch of ice cold water into their vagina, gotten halfway through a scene, run back to the bathroom, and do the same thing all over again, just to avoid showing menstruation on camera?

When it comes to sex, this stuff is always going to be accessible in one way or another—and we can either realize that or keep pretending that, if there’s enough censorship, it’ll all go away. But porn is always going to be available on the internet, because there is always some little pocket where you can host whatever you want. And often, those little pockets make the tube sites look like bastions of respectability. As a kid, I would’ve found someone’s Playboy under a mattress, even without the internet—because people are always going to be defiant, and policing never works.

Samantha: It’s like Jurassic Park: Porn finds a way.