Drawing the Line Principles Launch

Where should lawmakers, platforms, and civil society draw the line between harmful sexual content that involves real victims, and personal expression such as fiction, artwork, roleplay, and LGBTQ+ self-expression?

This question has become increasingly urgent as governments and platforms respond to concerns about online sexual harms, child safety, deepfakes, and AI-generated content. Too often, these debates collapse very different categories of content into a single moral and legal category. The result can be a framework that fails survivors of real abuse, while also threatening privacy, artistic freedom, sexual expression, and marginalized communities.

Following the cancellation of RightsCon 2026, the Center for Online Safety and Liberty is reconvening its planned workshop as a public webinar to launch the Drawing the Line Principles: a rights-respecting, survivor-centered framework for distinguishing between content that documents or facilitates real-world abuse, and content that represents fictional, artistic, educational, or personal expression.

Participants will be invited to engage with the Drawing the Line Principles and consider how they can inform advocacy, platform policy, legislative reform, and survivor-centered approaches to online safety.