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Zoom Might Crack Down on Nudity and Pornography

Zoom logo over naked bodies.

What are we going to do now?!

MikelleStreet

In our new reality where in-person human interaction is heavily discouraged, people have been finding workarounds. Certain doctors visits can be converted into telemedicine appointments and conference calls can be done virtually. Oh, and sex parties -- sex parties have also gone online with more than a handful using Zoom as their service of choice. Now, the site is possibly planning to crack down on adult content.

For those who have taken the chance to read Zoom's "acceptable use" policy, they know that "displays of nudity, violence, pornography, sexually explicit material, or criminal activity," are all banned. It's, in fact, for this reason that Out hasn't covered the queer "orgies" that have been happening since quarantine has set in -- media attention can bring added regulation. Well, that's exactly what is happening as after a flood of features on the growing nightlife scene on Zoom, the company said they will use machine learning to help regulate things.

"We encourage users to report suspected violations of our policies, and we use a mix of tools, including machine learning, to proactively identify accounts that may be in violation," a spokesperson for Zoom told Rolling Stone. Where have we heard that before?

Multiple other sites and applications use machine learning and types of artificial intelligence to monitor posts like Facebook and Instagram. We've all seen how that monitoring can be inconsistent and otherwise faulty. It'll be interesting to see how Zoom fares.

Now that we aren't able to physically go out to cruise, and there's going to be increasing regulation on where we are able to successfully digitally cruise, what the hell we gon' do now?

It is worth saying that some people believe that the company is just saying this publicly and would never crack down on its adult users.

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Mikelle Street

Mikelle is the former editorial director of digital for PrideMedia, guiding digital editorial and social across Out, The Advocate, Pride.com, Out Traveler, and Plus. After starting as a freelancer for Out in 2013, he joined the staff as Senior Editor working across print and digital in 2018. In early 2021 he became Out's digital director, marking a pivot to content that centered queer and trans stories and figures, exclusively. In September 2021, he was promoted to editorial director of PrideMedia. He has written cover stories on Ricky Martin, Miss Fame, Nyle DiMarco, Jeremy O. Harris, Law Roach, and Symone.

Mikelle is the former editorial director of digital for PrideMedia, guiding digital editorial and social across Out, The Advocate, Pride.com, Out Traveler, and Plus. After starting as a freelancer for Out in 2013, he joined the staff as Senior Editor working across print and digital in 2018. In early 2021 he became Out's digital director, marking a pivot to content that centered queer and trans stories and figures, exclusively. In September 2021, he was promoted to editorial director of PrideMedia. He has written cover stories on Ricky Martin, Miss Fame, Nyle DiMarco, Jeremy O. Harris, Law Roach, and Symone.