Normally, Starbucks would be making headlines about its holiday cups or seasonal drinks at this time of year. But this week, the coffee retailer has announced a wholly different sort of change to its stores.
Business Insider reports that Starbucks will now take steps to block customers from viewing pornography on its public Wi-Fi networks. Watching porn is already banned at Starbucks locations, but, until now, there weren't any filters in place to actually prevent people from visiting pornographic sites.
The mega-chain committed to filtering its Wi-Fi back in 2016, when internet safety groups Enough Is Enough and the National Center on Sexual Exploitation called on Starbucks as well as McDonald's to implement the practice at their locations. But, where McDonald's took action at the time, Starbucks did not.
Since then, Enough Is Enough has continued to pressure Starbucks' leadership to act, even issuing a petition earlier this month. "Starbucks is keeping the doors wide open for convicted sex offenders and others to fly under the radar from law enforcement and use free, public WiFi services to access illegal child porn and hardcore pornography," said Enough Is Enough CEO Donna Rice Hughes in a statement on the organization's site. Little is known about how many people have actually used the public Wi-Fi at Starbucks locations to view porn.
Although they did not share many details, a Starbucks spokesperson told Business Insider last Wednesday that it has developed a tool that will block customers from accessing sites with illegal, "explicit," or pornographic content. This tool will be rolled out in stores starting next year.