Starbucks Vows to block porn in 2019, YouPorn to boycott coffee giant

By Leonardo Blair, Senior Reporter Friday, November 30, 2018

More than two years after agreeing to block pornography from its free Wi-Fi service, coffeehouse chain Starbucks has said that starting in 2019 customers will no longer be able to access X-rated content.

"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 U.S. locations in 2019," a Starbucks representative told Business Insider in an email this week.

The decision has sparked a boycott from the internet’s most popular free pornography website, YouPorn.

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"Following the news that Starbucks has blocked its customers from searching and viewing adult content within their establishments, YouPorn has updated their company policy banning all Starbucks products from its offices,” Alex Harris, YouPorn's communications director, said in a two-sentence email blast cited by Trib Live. "YouPorn now runs on Dunkin'."

Watching pornography is currently banned at Starbucks locations but the company doesn't use content blockers on its Wi-Fi service to prevent access to explicit content. While not going into details about how they intend to enforce their zero-pornography policy, the coffee company said they hope to avoid accidentally blocking inoffensive websites with their restricted Wi-Fi access in 2019.

Starbucks and fast food giant McDonald's agreed to block pornography from their Wi-Fi networks in 2016 due to a push from Enough Is Enough, a national bipartisan nonprofit organization that has led the fight to make the internet safer for children and families since 1994.

McDonald's began implementing a new filtered Wi-Fi policy in its corporate-owned restaurants throughout the U.S. in early 2016 and also made the filtering service available to their franchisees.

The recent action from Starbucks on their 2016 commitment came after a petition launched this month by Enough Is Enough calling out the coffee giant for reneging on their promise. The petition had more than 26,000 signatures as of Friday morning.

“The original petition was first launched July 14, 2016. McDonald's responded immediately and is now filtering in its nearly 14,000 locations nationwide. Starbucks broke its promise to filter since it committed to doing so more than two-and-a-half years ago. Hence, the need for a new petition,” Enough Is Enough said.

Responding to the latest statement by Starbucks, Enough Is Enough CEO Donna Rice Hughes told Business Insider she was happy with the development but noted it was too slow in coming.

She also told NBC News that she will reserve her applause for the company as well until she sees that action has been taken.

"They won’t get an applause until they’ve actually implemented safe Wi-Fi filtering," Hughes said. "This time we’re going to wait and see, and we’re going to keep the pressure on."

In its letter to Hughes on restricting access to pornography, Starbucks noted: “We are in the process of evaluating a global protocol to address this in all of our company-operated stores, and are in active discussions with organizations on implementing the right, broad-based solution that would remove any illegal and other egregious content. Once we determine that our customers can access our free Wi-Fi, as part of our commitment to ensuring our free Wi-Fi in a way that also doesn’t involuntarily block unintended content, we will implement this in our stores.”