Major pornography sites are joining the protest against the Federal Communications Commission's efforts to roll back Obama administration net neutrality rules.
The list of companies and organizations joining Wednesday's "Day of Action" in support of net neutrality includes Amazon, Netflix, Etsy, Twitter, reddit, Pinterest, Spotify, Yelp, and numerous left-wing groups.
Porn sites have also joined the cause, which was organized by the liberal advocacy group Fight for the Future. The group is providing pop-up ads and alerts against the FCC for Wednesday's protest, and encourages websites to direct users to submit comments on FCC chairman Ajit Pai's proposal.
PornHub, the porn search engine PornMD, RedTube (which is described as the "best free p---y and porn tube site on the web"), YouPorn, and Kink.com are all participating in the protest.
MindGeek, a Montreal-based company said to have a monopoly on porn aggregation, owns several of the sights, including PornHub, YouPorn, and RedTube. Performers who have worked for MindGeek say they fear being blacklisted if they criticize the company.
Kink.com, which provides "Kink & Fetish Porn for the Adventurous," has been hit with several scandals in recent years. The company's founder Peter Acworth was arrested for cocaine possession in 2013, and the website has found itself in the middle of numerous sexual assault allegations against porn star James Deen.
At least 10 women accused Deen of assault, both on and offset, while shooting videos for Kink.com.
Several women placed the blame on the porn company for "pushing workers to beyond their limits and turning a blind eye to their safety," Mic.com reported.
In 2015, performers filed several lawsuits against the company claiming they were subjected to an "unsafe work environment," and multiple performers claimed they contracted HIV on set.
Two Kink.com performers contracted HIV in 2013, and one said she did during a shoot for the porn company.
The incident resulted in an investigation by the California Division of Occupational Safety and Health, and the company received a record $78,710 fine.
Fight for the Future says its list of participating companies is "broad, and represents a wide range of perspectives and online communities."
"The one thing all of them agree on: defending Title II net neutrality," the group said.
The FCC voted in May to begin the process of reversing Obama-era Title II net neutrality rules, which for the first time in history classified internet service providers as public utilities, rather than information services. The rules subjected ISPs to broad government regulation and rules for how companies can manage traffic over their own networks.
The Obama administration's FCC began investigating Verizon, T-Mobile, and AT&T under the rules for offering packages that allowed customers unlimited data streaming. Pai ended the investigations after he was elevated to FCC chairman by President Donald Trump.
The deadline for public comment on Pai's "Restoring Internet Freedom" proposal is July 17.
Aside from big online companies and porn sites, many left-wing groups are joining Fight for the Future's protest. The list includes: The Women's March, Barack Obama's Organizing for Action, the Daily Kos, the Nation, Moveon.org, NARAL Pro-Choice, Our Revolution, Progressive Change Campaign Committee, the ACLU, Color of Change, and Greenpeace.