Starbucks to install anti-porn Wi-Fi filters

Starting next year, you won’t be able to watch porn at Starbucks.

The coffee giant said that starting in 2019, it will have new filters in place to prevent customers using its in-store Wi-Fi from accessing explicit content.

Starbucks refers to itself as the “third place” – meaning a No. 3 comfort spot after home and work – and has released a statement about why it’s putting these anti-porn measures in place.

“While it rarely occurs, the use of Starbucks public Wi-Fi to view illegal or egregious content is not, nor has it ever been, permitted,” the company said. “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.”

The company didn’t explain how it currently forbids porn-watching or what happens when customers are caught looking at porn in the store. For example, are they thrown out of the store? Booted from the loyalty program?

On the corporate website, it says, “(W)e reserve the right to stop any behavior that interferes with our customer experience as part of our commitment to ensuring our stores remain a safe and welcoming environment.”

Nor did the Seattle-based chain respond to questions about what kinds of filters would be installed and by what date all Starbucks stores in the U.S. will be outfitted with them.

Starbucks explained that it has filters in its U.K. stores in partnership with Friendly WiFi, a government-initiated safe certification standard for public Wi-Fi.

“We continue to work with our international markets to address appropriately,” the company said.

In the U.S., it had pledged Wi-Fi filters in 2016, but while other fast-food companies, like McDonald’s, took action, Starbucks didn’t. The company didn’t answer questions about the delay.

Anti-porn advocate Gail Dines, a pro- fessor emerita of sociology at Wheelock College in Boston, called the Starbucks announcement “excellent news.”

“Especially when you consume porn in public, you’re sending a very powerful message to the women who walk past you,” she said. “It’s a public statement about how normal misogyny is.“

Dines theorized that Starbucks may have decided to install the filters now out of fear of lawsuits or lost revenues.

“Why would you go there with your kids when you could see someone watching porn, when you could go somewhere, like Panera, where you know you won’t,” she said. “No corporation acts out of the goodness of their heart.”