iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Just discovered that Utah has a tax on escort agencies. In other words, the state demands its cut of the profits for sex work. If only there was a word for that.

59-27-103. Tax imposed on a sexually explicit business -- Tax imposed on an escort service.
(1) A tax is imposed on a sexually explicit business equal to 10% of amounts paid to or charged by the sexually explicit business for the following transactions:
(a) an admission fee;
(b) a user fee;
(c) a retail sale of tangible personal property made within the state;
(d) a sale of:
i) food and food ingredients as defined in Section 59-12-102; or il) prepared food as defined in Section 59-12-102;
(e) a sale of a beverage; and
(f) any service.
(2) (a) Except as provided in Subsection (2)(b), a tax is imposed on an escort service equal to 10% of amounts paid or charged by the escort service for any transaction that involves providing an escort to another individual.
(b) Notwithstanding Subsection (2)(a), the tax imposed by Subsection (2)(a) does not apply to a transaction that is subject to the tax imposed in Subsection (1).
(3) The tax imposed by this section:
(a) may not be imposed on any sales and use tax collected or paid under Chapter 12, Sales and Use Tax Act; and
(b) is subject to an agreement sales and use tax under Chapter 12, Sales and Use Tax Act.
(4) The commission shall administer this chapter in accordance with Chapter 12, Part 1, Tax Collection.

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What had been a small, volunteer, bootstrapped start-up was pushed into the red by payment processors demanding exorbitant fees to process sex-related content.

The commissions tom sales kept us mancially balanced for severd yedis.
But since 2025, our revenue has no longer been enough to cover our fixed costs: servers, accounting, payment systems, email services, etc. (And I'm not talking about salaries. The team has been volunteering since the public launch!)
An additional cost has arisen this autumn (2026): our long-standing payment provider dropped us because of our adult content.
To keep going, card networks are demanding prohibitive commission rates.
Consequently, Flowfo is operating at a loss

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Banks, the biggest arbiter of what can be distributed online, are steadily restricting the types of speech — art, entertainment, resources — permitted. A payment provider dropped FlowFo for allowing sex-related content, pushing them out of business. Financial discrimination is censorship.

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"Toby hosts aviation panels at furry conventions, and he says that they are among the most popular events, with recent ones attracting upwards of 400 attendees. All fursonas, he says, are represented, though airline pilots 'do tend to favor birds.'"

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People are fine with a certain amount of fiction, so long as whether it's reality TV, politics, porn or memoir. They understand the rules and the context. What they don't like is being told a lie. They don't want to be made a fool of. They want some plausible deniability that they're a mark.

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The main effect I've seen on creators? Constant suspicion. Fans making them prove that it's really them. That they're really chatting. That they're really in the picture. That they're a real person. There's huge demand for authenticity, even in fantasy.

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I've also seen successful uses cases with interactive erotica and chat. Pure fantasy, where people know there engaging in fantasy, just as they would with a fantasy in their head. Maybe there are more, but at least from what I've seen, it's carved out a niche, but hasn't replaced creators.

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That's not to say there aren't uses for AI in adult. Creators use it for everything from captions to shoot scripts to editing. When it comes to fetishes (breast expansion! giantess! transformation fantasies!) it's like supercharged CGI. But there's still a person there.

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fish for the one person in who knows how many who's willing to fall for it. Whose drunk or lonely or not paying attention who'll click on a link or send you money. But the low percentage doesn't matter because it's so cheap to produce.

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While there aoutliers, where generative AI has succeeded in porn is generally as slop and bots. It's cheap and easy to produce and you can produce endless streams of it. It also shows up in catfishing and malware, largely on social media. But you're not looking to build an audience as much as

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audiences know that there's nothing behind it. You lose the drama. It's not limited to AI. Think about Milli Vanilli, or James Frey's A Million Little Pieces. A huge best-selling memoir — until it was revealed to be semi-fiction. The story itself didn't change. But the context did. It was empty.

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🦇🎃💀 Riana-mator 💀🎃🦇 @riana.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

They tried this with adult content and it largely failed. While there have been some niche use cases, audiences want to feel a connection to the creator — whether that's an author, a porn performer or a musician. It's not because the technology isn't believable, it's because

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Reposted by Mike Stabile

NEW RESEARCH PAPER! With Cyndie Demeocq at U of Edinburgh, today I’m releasing a paper analyzing 71 federal criminal cases, filed around the US from 2022-2025, that somehow involve AI-generated or -morphed CSAM or child obscenity. Here's the SSRN link: papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....

papers.ssrn.com

Yes, It's Already Illegal: Federal Criminal Prosecutions for AI-Generated Child Sexual Abuse Material, 2022-2025

<div> Generative artificial intelligence (AI) is now capable of creating realistic-looking images and videos with just a text prompt. This capacity has been mi

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Mike Stabile @mikestabile.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

Utah wanted websites to verify the actual, physical location of visitors and force them to identify VPN users. The controversial addition to the state's age-verification law was suppose to go into effect next week, but a District Court judge struck it down at least temporarily.

techradar.com

Federal judge strikes down Utah's controversial VPN age verification rules

A major win for digital privacy as courts rule that state-level age verification laws cannot mandate the tracking of encrypted web traffic

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Mike Stabile @mikestabile.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

Zoom's new AI assistant comes with a prompt to "make me sound smart" on a call. Good luck!

Pre-programmed prompts:

Catch me up

Make me sound smart

Decisions and Action Items

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Reposted by Mike Stabile

Kriss Lowrance @krisslowrance.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

My job in 2019: "Make porn sites work better, so adults who pay money to view porn will want to pay money to view porn." My Job in 2026: "Draft a compliance plan for Eastwestern Tennabamaho's new 'porn sites confirm viewer's blood type every 10 seconds' law, so Visa doesn't drone-strike my house"

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Reposted by Mike Stabile

Ursula K. Le Guin Bot @leguinbot.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

What sane person could live in this world and not be crazy?

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Mike Stabile @mikestabile.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

“I don’t want the government spying on me” is the type of straightforward position to take, regardless of ideology.

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Reposted by Mike Stabile

🌦️Wifeguy Auteur🌦️ @delugeduvall.effigyfilms.com · 25/09/2026

if “we’re all cam girls in a surveillance state” ya’ll better be acting in solidarity with actual fucking cam girls 😒

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Reposted by Mike Stabile

JW Mason @jwmason.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

This is the master key to deciphering contemporary debates about free speech. www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2026/se...

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It's also why its so important to support groups like @eff.org and @fightforthefuture.org who work to educate legislators. Yes, there are terrible ideologues who hate privacy online, but a lot — perhaps the majority — legislators voting for these bans just haven't thought it through.

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Wisconsin Reverses Decision to Ban VPNs in Age-Verification Bill - CNET

Trust me when I tell you that few lawmakers have thought through any of the implications. Frighteningly few understand the technology. Others don't understand why we need privacy on the internet — or think only criminals do. That's why calling / writing / fighting is so important.

cnet.com

The law would have required websites to block VPN users from accessing "harmful material."

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We can and should fight back. I worked on the WI bill, which banned sites with "material harmful to minors" from accepting VPN traffic. Thanks to @fightforthefuture.org and @fsc.bsky.social and others, the provision was ultimately struck — and the bill vetoed. But that's only because we fought back

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Michigan, Wisconsin and Utah all tried to pass VPN restrictions this past year. We should expect even more this year: I'm already hearing about new bills being planned in other states, including one that would make it a felony to bypass age-verification using VPN. This isn't about protecting kids.

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ryan cooper @ryanlcooper.com · 24/09/2026

VPN bans are a direct response to age-verification. Legislators are frustrated that people are getting around their surveillance, but rather than rethink their strategy, they're doubling down and banning VPNs. Fight the Flock-ing of the internet.

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Reposted by Mike Stabile

"No one on Bluesky thinks they’re interacting with a cross section of the population. But a lot of people on X do think that." talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/we-di...

talkingpointsmemo.com

We Didn’t Know Until This Day … Twitter Was the Echo Chamber All Along

Daniel Drezner says we are now in the Wile E. Coyote phase...

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"Housing instability, criminalization, poverty, isolation, and institutional indifference create danger... We should not need a million files, a room full of chemicals, and the possibility of a serial killer before missing women become visible."

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Sen. Rick Scott Introduces SCREEN Act to Help Protect American Kids from Foreign Predators

welp, there's a new SCREEN Act. Sort of. This one's "Strengthened Checks for Reliable Evaluation of Entrants Nationwide Act" and focused on cruise lines visas (?) Purely as an acronym, I think "Shielding Children's Retinas from Egregious Exposure on the Net Act" is better. Or at least campier.

rickscott.senate.gov

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Florida schools must do more to purge ‘inappropriate’ books, commissioner says

Florida's educational commissioner singled out Toni Morrison's "The Bluest Eye" demanding its removal from school libraries, even if no complaint is filed: “The time is over for how we are addressing the smut, the porn, the inappropriateness that is still infiltrating our libraries in our schools."

yahoo.com

The big story: Saying Florida parents continue to find too much age-inappropriate material in their children’s schools, state education commissioner Henry Mack instructed districts to do a better job ...

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I realize "fans believe sex workers are human and have feelings" is a low bar to shoot for, but the religious right and a whole lot of second-wave feminists have campaigned for years that no one could actually see these people as human so...

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Sexual objectification does not erase the perceived humanity of OnlyFans creators, study suggests

Adult content creators are seen as real people by fans, rebutting years of anti-porn claims that sex work strips creators of humanity. In fact, OnlyFans creators were percieved as having more self-control, free will and capacity for independent thinking than other women.

psypost.org

People who sell explicit digital content online are heavily sexually objectified by observers, yet they are still viewed as capable individuals with free will. These findings challenge traditional psy...

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Reposted by Mike Stabile

Cecilia Tan @ceciliatan.com · 23/09/2026

So less than 5 years ago, korean company Kakao bought the serial fiction site Radish for $440 million, Tapas for $510 million. Both were moneymaking sites where a fair number of romance and erotica writers made bank. But they shut down Radish less than a year ago, and now Tapas will close, too. Why?

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