Is Zoom Really Trying to Crack Down on Virtual Sex Parties?

Like most forms of human interaction, sex parties have gone virtual, and Zoom is their unsurprising, if unwilling, host.

Once known primarily as a business video-conferencing platform, Zoom is reportedly less than thrilled with this newfound application of its services, and, according to some sources, is trying to crack down on the NSFW behavior playing out on the platform.

“Zoom‘s user policies explicitly prohibit any obscene, indecent, illegal, or violent activity or content on the platform,” a spokesperson for the platform told Rolling Stone. “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.”

The spokesperson added that the company is prepared to take a “number of actions” against those using it for “any activity that is harmful, obscene, or indecent,” including any involving “displays of nudity, violence, pornography, [and] sexually explicit material.”

However, not everyone is convinced by these vague threats. According to PC Mag, Zoom’s own privacy policy makes it difficult for the platform to make good on its threats against sex partiers, as the company states that it never monitors your meetings or content, adding that “unless a meeting is recorded by the host, the video, audio, and chat content is not stored.”

Meanwhile, one sex party host told Rolling Stone he suspects that Zoom, already in hot water for a variety of privacy and harassment concerns, may just be trying to save face with anti-pornography lip service. “I think this is another instance of a business that wants to pretend it doesn’t do these things, but of course it does,” he told the magazine.

Indeed, as more sex workers are forced to take their work online and the single and quarantined among us have turned to virtual expressions of horniness, most corners of the internet have proven even more welcome environments for those expressions than usual. Essentially, the internet is one big sex party right now, whether Zoom likes it or not.

Subscribe here for our free daily newsletter.