Sex Expo is taking place in New York City this weekend. Before the giant sex-positive exhibition opens its doors, exhibitors, attendees, and the wider community are staging a protest rally.

The rally is to protest against censorship by social media platforms of sex-positive content.

It’s not just porn stars that are falling foul of the opaque adult-content policies of social media platforms – increasing numbers of people who are publishing content about sex, sexual health, or body image are being blocked from engaging with the audiences that they’ve built, their voices are being silenced.

If you’d like to join the anti-censorship rally in New York City, everyone will be gathering outside the entrance to the Metropolitan Pavilion of Sex Expo at 10 AM on Saturday, 1 October.

Here at Squirt.org, online censorship is something that we experience every day. Our Instagram, Facebook, and Tumblr accounts have been suspended by the platforms, and Squirt.org appears to be a banned term – this prevents us from posting links to the content we publish on our website.

For creators of adult content, the consequences of having your social media accounts suspended or deleted can be devastating – cutting you off from your audience and significantly compromising your income.

To highlight this, a group of adult content creators, companies, organisations and sex workers recently co-signed an open letter to Mark Zuckerberg and other key executives within Meta – the company that owns both Facebook and Instagram. The letter highlighted the company’s discriminatory moderation practices, pointing out that anyone considered to be creating sex-positive content is being unfairly targeted.

Censorship of adult-related content is not a new thing but we can’t sit back passively and assume that there’s nothing that we can do about it.

We need to build a coalition of voices that is speaking out against censorship. There is a clear difference between preventing the distribution of content that is illegal or misleading to banning content because you think it might offend someone. We can’t accept that social media platforms get to decide which voices are heard. This is a fundamental issue with ramifications far beyond the accessibility of sex-positive content on the internet.

Join us at the anti-censorship rally in New York City on Saturday, 1 October, and add your voice to this important protest.