We recently told you about the Pornocalypse, or rather, why it matters and why you should care.
We heard from Ms Naughty, the Australian feminist pornographer who has spent the last few years fighting battle after battle with the prudish social media networks; fine with having all sorts of banal waffle, questionable political content and endless bickering on their sites, but not sex.
The squeezing of an entire industry is occurring. Performers too are reaping the whirlwind of the pornocalypse. Melody Kush, cam girl, model and as she rightly notes in her Twitter bio, “total sweetheart”, has felt the force of social media moderators with itchy trigger fingers.
Melody’s Twitter account was taken offline without any warning. As her main business and interaction account it was, as she told BaDoink, “the scariest 48 hours of my career.”
“It was because I had a nipple in my header photo. I didn’t think anything of it because you can post nudity all over Twitter, but not on your profile as an avi or header photo. I was desensitized from seeing all these graphic avi’s that are on accounts still up and running.”
Melody believes that once banned, the sites involved do nothing to help you. You have to face an appeal with no knowledge of why you were banned, what you can do to overturn it and, in Melody’s case, fret over whether or not your main source of advertising and revenue is about to disappear.
“The policy seems a bit loose, and I feel a warning should have been issued. They suspend you, and they make you research the terms to find out why you were suspended, and then you have to follow the appeal process. They didn’t give me a reason as to why I was suspended until they emailed me back several days later, I literally had to figure it out for myself.”
Melody is understandably worried about not just her own career, but that of her colleagues and the industry itself.
“I believe that any change in policy regarding personal profiles/adult related content will have a direct impact on the model, and eventually the industry. The fact that it becomes harder to promote adult content, it could definitely have an impact on a larger scale.
“When I was suspended it was certainly ill timed. It was 48 hours prior to my biggest show of the year as a cam girl (my birthday) which can easily translate into my biggest earnings. Had I not been able to advertise I was on cam, and relay other information about the upcoming show, it could have been detrimental to my big day. I clearly stated that in my appeal to Twitter and that reinstating the account ASAP was VERY important to my business. They answered me within 48 hours, but I have heard of other girls waiting much longer than that, I consider myself lucky.”
Is there a solution? Melody believes it’s a combination of hoping a platform sticks to an adult-friendly vibe, models and performers being able to identify new platforms and, well… luck.
“It will certainly influence new models to possibly start out on another social media platform, if one has a reputation to give adult models issues. An example: I no longer use my Vine account as there is no longer nudity allowed, I will simply post IG video instead, I have zero use for Vine anymore. Deletion of accounts will definitely impact models currently working as we’re used to doing business over these platforms.”
For now, Melody is back in business and remains popular as ever. But as she can attest to, the rug can be pulled swiftly from underneath your feet. It’s an indictment of the various networks and their policies that people trying to make a living are having to issue survival hints to each other. Like we told you, the Pornocalypse is very real.
