Starbucks Says It Will Start Blocking Porn On Its Stores' Wi-Fi In 2019 (nbcnews.com)

Starbucks announced that it will start blocking pornography viewing on its stores' Wi-Fi starting in 2019. "A Starbucks representative told NBC News that the viewing of 'egregious content' over its stores' Wi-Fi has always violated its policy, but the company now has a way to stop it," reports NBC News. From the report: "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," the company representative said. The announcement was first reported by Business Insider and comes after a petition from internet-safety advocacy group Enough is Enough garnered more than 26,000 signatures. The nonprofit launched a porn-free campaign aimed at McDonald's and Starbucks in 2014, and it says that while McDonald's "responded rapidly and positively," Starbucks did not.

In a letter that [Enough is Enough CEO Donna Rice Hughes] said she received from Starbucks over the summer, the company vowed to address the issue "once we determine that our customers can access our free Wi-Fi in a way that also doesn't involuntarily block unintended content." Starbucks has not released details about how it plans to restrict the viewing of pornographic sites or illegal content over its Wi-Fi. In response, the vice president of YouPorn responded by sending a memo to staff banning Starbucks products from company offices starting Jan. 1, 2019.

Comments

That's petty

[Actually, I do RTFA]

In response, the vice president of YouPorn responded by sending a memo to staff banning Starbucks products from company offices starting Jan. 1, 2019.

People bringing coffee to work is considered pretty normal. People watching porn at a coffee shop isn't. That VP is making YouPorn look pretty stupid.

Re:That's petty

[Eva Braun Feminazi]

One of my customers from Kenesah, GA knew of a "that guy" that came in to the local Starbucks shops and was editing porn clips. The employees all knew what he was doing and kept kicking him out. He tried to hide it but there were only so many ways a guy could sit in his seat and sometimes whatever was behind him reflected what was on the screen. He would go from one Starbucks to the other. He told me about this two or three years ago so the incident happened at least that long ago.

It does happen.

~Eva

Re:That's petty

[Narcocide]

I'm sure he isn't banning all coffee at work. There are at least two major chains that compete with Starbucks here. There's even a good chance of one of those other coffee shop chains (or, gasp, even a private establishment!) being closer to their office.

Re:That's petty

[zlives]

so they will be blocking instagram, faebook, you tube ....
i see them failing

Re:That's petty

[EvilSS]

That's petty

No that's free marketing.

Re: That's petty

[Zero__Kelvin]

I haven't worked at or heard of any IT company that doesn't provide free coffee to their employees for as long as I can remember. If, in your mind, you need to get coffee from a coffee shop to bring to work, you are probably still in school or work for now, and have always worked for, shit companies who haven't figured out that the cost of caffeine is easily offset by the improvement in productivity providing it confers.

Re: That's petty

[swillden]

I can assure you that people watching porn in Starbucks is not a real issue

You really can't, at least not with any sort of authority. You go to Starbucks regularly, sure, but your sample of behavior at Starbucks' coffee shops is still ludicrously small for drawing any conclusions.

Let's suppose that only one Starbucks patron in a million watches porn at Starbucks, and let's suppose that you've visited Starbucks four times daily, seven days per week, for 10 years. That's just over 100,000 visits. The probability that you'd have seen a porn-watcher in 100K visits is 9.5%.

There are about 14,000 Starbucks stores in the US. Let's suppose that, on average, each serves 500 patrons per day. That's 7M daily visits. On average, there will be 7 porn-watchers in Starbucks stores on any day, and the probability that any one day finds no one watching porn in any of their stores is 0.09%.

And since a high percentage of these porn watchers will generate complaints, and those will likely all get reported to corporate, I'm sure to Starbucks' corporate offices this seems like a huge problem, even at an incidence of only one in one million.

Re: That's petty

[Zontar The Mindless]

If, in your mind, you need to get coffee from a coffee shop to bring to work, you are probably still in school or work for now, and have always worked for, shit companies who haven't figured out that the cost of caffeine is easily offset by the improvement in productivity providing it confers.

Or maybe you've noticed that the free coffee invariably sucks and/or the machine's out of order half the time.

When I still worked in the office, I kept my own beans, grinder, electric kettle, and plunger pot there: "Y'all can drink that swill if you like; I prefer coffee, thanks."

Re:That's petty

[Hallux-F-Sinister]

Iced coffee is an abomination. Do you also douse your Fillet Mignon with ketchup?

Iced coffee is not filet mignon with ketchup.

It's more like a desiccated hamburger that fell out of your kid's Happy Meal after he nodded off and rolled right under the driver's seat, then SAT there while you went on a road trip through the middle of Arizona in July, only to be discovered a month later.

Re:That's petty

[Joce640k]

Yes, but do they have to do it in Starbucks?

Re: That's petty

[f3rret]

Oh I see, you're one of those guys.

Re: That's petty

[Zero__Kelvin]

Since most companies have coffee available I'm going to say it really doesn't matter, and as usual you are an idiot trying to sound smart while broadcasting to the world how incredibly stupid you are.

Already doing this

[jwhyche]

I figured they already did this. I was unable to get to pornhub from starbucks the other day. I go there to read the articles.

End of an era

[Tablizer]

There goes their profits on "hot whipped & frothy" lattes.

Re:End of an era

[Pseudonym]

It's going to save them a fortune on napkins though.

can't block vpn's!

[Joe_Dragon]

can't block vpn's!

Re:can't block vpn's!

[Narcocide]

Well... you say that, but... they can actually. They can absolutely block VPNs.

Blocking them reliably without blocking all encrypted and non-HTTP traffic however would be a full-time job, so I'm guessing security is going out the window too.

Re:can't block vpn's!

[zlives]

most likely they will use some sort of DNS filter and call it a policy... blocking VPN's would actually affect way more people that actually do real work from starbucks. deep packet/ssl inspection MITM would probably not fly.

Re:can't block vpn's!

[ceoyoyo]

Nah, they'll block the obvious sites. They're responding to a bad press attack by a special interest group. They need to do something so they can say, see, we did something.

Re:can't block vpn's!

[ourlovecanlastforeve]

Nobody who is working at a Starbucks is doing real work.

What about their prices?

[reboot246]

They are really obscene!

And value

[phantomfive]

And nothing of value was lost.

Re:Net neutrality arguments?

[Gavagai80]

That's like arguing that an internet kiosk in a department store that only allows accessing a store's own website to search products is a violation of net neutrality. Starbucks is not an ISP, they're a coffee company that happens to offer customers some internet service under certain conditions.

Re:And what way is that, exactly?

[SuricouRaven]

They don't.

The number of people actually looking at porn in starbucks is tiny, and easily dealt with by asking them to stop or kicking them out. This policy is more for PR reasons. A few anti-pornography pressure groups have been pushing for various companies to start blocking porn for years, and Starbucks is on their list. So Starbucks gets pestered with petitions and badmouthed in opinion columns all over right-leaning media. Eventually Starbucks board notices this and thinks 'Why not? It'll shut them up, doesn't cost us anything, and we can even spin it to look socially responsible.'

And when the very rare incidents of people looking at porn in Starbucks continue - because all filters can be broken, and because people can just download it at home for viewing later, and because mobile internet is a thing - then Starbucks can still kick the offender out just as before.

Re:Net neutrality arguments?

[Calydor]

The connection is complimentary. You could just as well be trying to complain about what KIND of chocolate a hotel leaves on the pillows in their rooms, or perhaps which sports game a bar is choosing to show on their TV.

I don't approve of censorship, but Starbucks is (fortunately) not an ISP. Your cable company is. And before you get into it, the law would be simple: Any service provider who is getting their service from another service provider can filter as they please, UNLESS that upstream provider is not available to the customer as a civilian living at that specific place. Bam, Starbucks can filter if they get through Comcast, but Comcast can't filter.