McDonald’s now blocks porn on its public Wi-Fi in the U.S., Starbucks urged to follow suit

McDonald’s restaurants have long served as popular hubs for pigging out on greasy food, gulping down gallons of soda, and… watching porn? Hmm, that’s a new one.

Internet safety evangelist group Enough Is Enough (EiE) has lobbied politicians and corporations for years with the intent of “making the internet safer for children and families.” In 2014, it launched the “National Porn Free Wi-Fi” campaign, notching up thousands of petitions and signatures in conjunction with a number of other organizations such as the National Center on Sexual Exploitation. The target of the campaigning were two giants of the corporate culinary world — McDonald’s and Starbucks.

While both have already filtered out porn from their stores in the U.K., the same has not been the case in the U.S. According to EiE, Starbucks has yet to respond to its campaign, while McDonald’s has been looking at ways to filter out porn from its U.S. outlets for the past couple of years.

The fast food giant started blocking porn content in its own stores in early 2016, and franchise owners are also now being invited to use the same porn-filtering technology.

It’s an interesting move for sure. On the one hand, some would argue that porn has no place on public Wi-Fi networks, but by EiE’s own assertion: “McDonald’s wasn’t aware of any pornography related incidents in their stores.”

So it seems this campaign wasn’t built upon anything other than some vague notion that porn is bad. At any rate, few will complain that they can no longer peruse PornHub while wolfing down a Big Mac and Fries. Starbucks, it’s over to you…