Telstra removes porn from BigPond
'Glamour content'
Telstra has removed porn from its BigPond website after a personal directive from CEO David Thodey.
In an internal email obtained by Mumbrella, Thodey told staff that pornography would no longer run on BigPond to “respect gender equality”, even though its ‘glamour content’ was relatively mild.
Thodey said that the move was a response to pressure from customers, who thought that Telstra “shouldn’t promote adult-orientated movies or videos that objectify women”.
Telstra has also been under pressure from activists including Collective Shout and Ruth Limkin of the blog Bread and Justice.
The company would not say how much revenue removing porn would cost the company, and said that money had not been a factor in the decision.
Thodey’s email to staff in full:
Recently, I received emails from customers about content promoted on our BigPond website. Those customers thought we shouldn’t promote adult-orientated movies or videos that objectify women.
I have to agree. We have therefore decided that we will no longer promote access to adult-orientated content through our websites.
Let me put this decision in context.
The content accessible via BigPond is mild compared to what’s available on the Internet. None of it had an ‘R’ rating. In fact, I’m assured you could find more explicit content at your local DVD shop or elsewhere in cyberspace. However, this is not the real issue! Why, then, have we made this decision?
The simple answer is that promoting content such as this is just not the Telstra thing to do and we cannot support anything that is sexist or that is inconsistent with our values.
We are, in many ways, Australia’s largest family company. We are owned by more than a million Australian families, many of our customers are Australian families and family businesses. And we have – through the Telstra Foundation and our corporate citizenship efforts – dedicated ourselves to promoting Australia’s cultural diversity, including gender diversity, through initiatives such as the Telstra Business Women’s Awards.
Our decision is consistent with our values of respect and diversity
If our customers want to view adult-orientated content on the Internet, they still can. That’s up to them, not us. This decision is not about censorship, but choice and respecting gender equality.
Anti-sexploitation activists Collective Shout Shout had been campaigning Telstra to remove porn from BigPond, and have now turned their sites on mobile providers Vodafone and 3M to follow suit.
Collective Shout activist Melinda Tankard Reist will be speaking at Mumbrella360 about adland’s sexploitation of kids.
Splendid, the religious nutters win again.
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Bigpond had porn?
Pornpond?
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Not a problem, there’s still plenty of porn on billboards
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Outstanding example of a company with moral standards actually acting by those standards. Bravo!
Thanks Duncan Riley for your “religious nutters” comment. There are many parents with children who would deeply appreciate this action by a large corporation. Thodey’s email is an impressive stand against the sliding standards which the “non-religious nutters” so aptly represented by Duncan Riley endorse.
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Back to redtube it is
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Duncan,
On pain of legal threat, you should be clear that:
MTR and the Collective Shout agenda is not to be confused with that of the Conservative Christian movement or similar agendas.
No siree. No way. Not ever. Not on your nelly.
Nor should this “victory” be viewed as pointless. It has been received to great acclaim by such luminaries as the Collective Shout Facebook page.
Be in no doubt, that today, a great scourge on our society has been completely erased and eradicated.
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can someone send me a link to this adult content, or other content similar?
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Do we live in a nanny state? Are we not adults? Has pornography been outlawed? The religious nutties of this world win again and again erode our freedom of speech & expression!
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Oh this is the start of a slippery slope. First this and whatever an arbitrary definition of “porn” may be, then we’ll have these same crazies (Sue me, I dare ya!) wanting songs by Eminem banned, then we’ll have anything that’s not “wholesome” and “family” (again decided by arbitrary decision) deleted.
How about we all assume that people are actually capable of making decisions for and by themselves? We don’t need you nannies telling us what you think we should all have access to – get out of my lounge and bed rooms!
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This is why I’m with Optus!
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you have got to be kidding me. I think beauty pagents exploit women too. and ads that show women in the kitchen. whoa dont get me started. then there are the mums who can do everything and still not a hair out of place. how can women live up to this …… o thats alright is it….they like being seen as super human umm ahhh and mums who um can multitask EVERYTHING…. yeah thats wrong and should be ………. oh they like to be known for that too. im going to the pub for a glass of wine
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*Sad face*
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Telstra hadn’t learned from its previous run-ins
“Telstra ‘selling porn to kids for $1’ ” days
http://www.news.com.au/busines.....1115034402
That said, I’m sure nutters like MTR and her shrieking coterie will be in 7th heaven tonight.
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If it wasn’t for the porn content on the net there would be less than 100 households actually conected to the internet on this whole continent. Fact (I read it on the net somewhere).
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what’s bigpond?
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The censorship police applying pressure but use the very old “objectifying women” theory, they have reproductive rights on their agenda too. Be very afraid Australian women.
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Thankfully Telstra Bigpond Cable streams Redtube nice and quickly.
As for not objectifying women I think if the lunatic minority was successful in removing womens sexuality completely they would then have to deal with some particularly unintended consequences.
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It is easy to live Porn-free if that’s what you want.
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To I Wonder – well said
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‘scourge’, ‘eradicated’, ‘erased’ – if that’s the language you apply to M-Rated soft-porn, I’d hate to see your reaction to something that actually challenges society’s perception of what is decent…
If you don’t like something, don’t watch it. Telling other people what they can see and how they should think only illustrates your own insecurities. I’m sure the good people at Collective Shout and Ruth Limkin viewed the offending videos to protect our virtue.
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BP,
My post was heavily laden with irony.
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My apologies, it was a bad morning to be reading about such things 🙂
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Sights.. not sites. Got me confused at the end of your blog
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Have a read…splendid take-down
http://www.guardian.co.uk/scie.....CMP=twt_gu
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Don’t we live in a democracy? I think we do that is why I do chose not to be religious or belong to a faith. It is also like having a television and not liking what is on it, I can chose to turn it off or change channels.
Where do one now take responsibility for their own actions in Society, we seriously are becoming governed into submission, whereby the minority dictate to the majority. It would be quite interesting to challenge David Theoday into removing all dvd’s that are “adult-orientated movies or videos that objectify women” ie Basic Instinct and other similar movies.
He made the rules now we should make him play by them.
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Telstra has moved closer to the full closure of its long-running BigPond brand after announcing a new Telstra Mail email service that will swallow up BigPond webmail.
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