Your Days of Watching Porn at Starbucks Are Numbered, Pervs

As of this writing, there are 84 videos on PornHub that have been filmed in a Starbucks, near a Starbucks, or have the word ‘Starbucks’ in their otherwise unrelated titles. And, as of this writing, Starbucks has committed itself to preventing you from watching those videos on its in-store Wi-Fi.

Sorry, creeps. According to Business Insider, next year, Starbucks will be rolling out content blockers that will prevent its customers from streaming porn or other explicit content in its stores. Although the terms and conditions for connecting to its Wi-Fi specifically prohibit watching pornography, that doesn’t seem to deter the kind of person who would watch porn in public from watching porn in public.

Starbucks has been increasingly pressured by the non-profit internet safety organization Enough Is Enough to block X-rated sites, especially since more than two years have passed since the coffee giant promised to do that very thing.

“Apparently Starbucks cares more about providing paper straws to protect the environment than protecting kids and patrons on its public Wi-Fi,” Enough is Enough wrote on its anti-porn online petition. “Starbucks broke its promise to filter pornography and child sex abuse images, despite its public announcement it would voluntarily provide safe Wi-Fi in its restaurants nationwide…an announcement more than 2 and-a-half years ago!”

Enough Is Enough CEO Donna Rice Hughes told Business Insider that unless Starbucks blocks porn, its stores will essentially be havens for convicted sex offenders (and she also suggests that teens could use the Wi-Fi to get around whatever other content filters their parents have installed at home, allowing them to, say, watch R-rated Netflix movies or read VICE’s more NSFW articles).

BUT NOT TO WORRY! Starbucks is totally getting around to this, like, right next year. “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,” a Starbucks spokesperson told MUNCHIES. “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 and we will begin introducing it to our U.S. locations in 2019.”

And lest Starbucks thinks that no one watches porn at Starbucks, they totally do. Reddit’s r/trashy and r/Starbucks subreddits have featured threads from appalled customers (“This guy watching porn at Starbucks”) and freaked out baristas (“HELP! A customer is watching porn in the lobby”).

So you’ve been warned, weirdos. Enjoy your last four-ish weeks of discreetly wanking beside a shelf of Hippea organic chickpea puffs and Starbucks holiday drinkware. Or, you know, don’t do that. Isn’t that what libraries are for?