A homeless man can walk in off the street take a sink shower and drop a massive cabbage dump in a Starbucks’ bathroom (so long as they don’t actively antagonize the customers). But starting early next year, Starbucks is adding something to the list of things they can’t do: Watch pornography.
That’s right. After years of pressure from anti-pornography groups, Starbucks has finally developed its own “custom solution” to block pornography from its in-store free Wi-Fi.
Here’s more from Business Insider:
Next year, the coffee giant plans to introduce a new tool meant to prevent customers from viewing pornography or other explicit content in stores. While watching pornography is banned at Starbucks locations, the chain does not have content blockers on its Wi-Fi service.
“To ensure the Third Place remains safe and welcoming to all, we have identified a solution to prevent this content from being viewed within our stores and we will begin introducing it to our US locations in 2019,” a Starbucks representative told Business Insider in an email on Wednesday.
Starbucks declined to give details on the solution but said the company tested multiple tools, hoping to avoid accidentally blocking unoffensive sites.
Though we imagine this will disappoint thousands of rough sleepers accustomed to cranking one out to their favorite Porn Hub clip in the cleanest “all access” bathroom in town (yes, thousands of homeless people have smartphones now), groups like Enough is Enough, which circulated a petition calling on Starbucks to ban porn, will surely be pleased. The decision follows similar moves by McDonald’s and other fast-food restaurants that offer Wi-Fi to any and all who walk through their doors.
A petition from Enough Is Enough calling for Starbucks to filter pornography was signed by more than 26,000 people as of Wednesday. Earlier this week, Enough Is Enough CEO Donna Rice Hughes attacked Starbucks for not following through on a commitment it made in 2016 to block explicit websites.
“By breaking its commitment, Starbucks is keeping the doors wide open for convicted sex offenders and others to fly under the radar from law enforcement and use free, public Wi-Fi services to access illegal child porn and hard-core pornography,” Hughes said in a statement.
“Having unfiltered hotspots also allows children and teens to easily bypass filters and other parental control tools set up by their parents on their smart phones, tablets, and laptops,” Hughes continued.
Still, Starbucks’ announcement has triggered some unintended blow back. In retaliation, YouPorn is banning Starbucks’ at all of its offices.
Starbucks to ban access to porn from free wi-fi in stores; in response, porn website YouPorn says it is banning Starbucks coffee from its offices. https://t.co/CfjN9RKpJK
— Jim Roberts (@nycjim) November 30, 2018
What’s more, Pornhub has also developed a workaround (well, sort of) to the Starbucks’ ban by introducing its new “Safe for Work” category, which will provide an offering of less-explicit content to enjoy while comfortably sipping a Chai Tea Latte.
via RSS https://ift.tt/2zFUo6C Tyler Durden