Australian politicians have a problem. No, it’s not the fact that they’re all secret dual citizens thus rendering them ineligible to serve in parliament (although that is a problem). The problem is that their Twitter accounts keep liking porn tweets.

First it was Defence Industry minister Christopher Pyne, whose account was caught liking a short porn video posted on Twitter. Then health minister Greg Hunt’s account was busted liking a Tweet from an account called “BBW CUM PUMPERS 69”.

Both stories are similar to the situation US Senator Ted Cruz found himself a few months back when his account also liked a porn video.

The ongoing saga has raised a number of questions, perhaps most importantly… who is watching porn on Twitter? Let’s try and answer them.

What’s Their Excuse, And Does It Stack Up?

The thing that all these incidents have in common is that none of the politicians involved have actually admitted to liking the porn tweets themselves. Instead, they’ve blamed Twitter or “hackers”. Greg Hunt has even said he’s going to refer the matter to the Australian Federal Police, though according to the cops he hasn’t actually done that yet.

The idea that hackers would break into the Twitter accounts of senior politicians and use their newfound power solely to like one individual tweet seems very, very odd. But it’s also pretty hard to prove exactly who liked a particular tweet.

Politicians often have their staff manage their Twitter accounts, so there’s always a chance someone forgot to switch back into their personal account before perusing Twitter for porn.

But that takes us back to the big question: just why are people watching porn on their Twitter accounts? Given the plethora of free porn available all over the internet it seems weird that anyone, whether they’re a staffer or a politician or just a regular person, would choose to use a platform like Twitter to get their kicks as opposed to something like PornHub.

There are a few theories going around that might help explain the situation, but do they check out?

Here’s The Theory

Before we get too deep it’s important to understand one very important thing: most politicians are terrible when it comes to tech.

The average age of Australian politicians is around 51, and just because they regularly pass laws about internet surveillance doesn’t mean they actually understand how the internet works. One of the most dialled phone numbers in Parliament House is the extension for the tech support service.

Whether it’s computers, phones or general internet issues, politicians are very reliant on their staff, and tech support, to help them figure things out.

Ok, now we’ve got that out of the way let’s try and figure out why anyone would be watching porn on Twitter.

When Pyne’s account got busted a rumour started doing the rounds that politicians, in particular government ministers, might be using social media platforms like Twitter to watch porn in an attempt to avoid public scrutiny of their web browsing habits.

Australia’s Freedom of Information regime is notoriously weak, but there have been examples where politicians have been forced to publish a list of websites they’ve visited. That means politicians are hyper aware of the websites they’re visiting either on the Parliamentary network or on devices loaned to them by the Parliament, which usually includes a laptop, phone and iPad.

If a politician was, for example, to visit PornHub while in their office or while using a Parliamentary issued laptop or phone, that visit could be logged and potentially published. That’s exactly what happened to one NSW minister back in 2010 — he was forced to resign after an audit found he’d visited adult and gambling websites on his office computer.

So how does Twitter fit into this? Well, if someone wanted to watch some porn but didn’t want to visit an actual porn website, they could just peruse the feeds of Twitter’s various porn accounts. Sure, it’s not the best user experience, but the advantage is the only website recorded in that instance would be twitter.com, which wouldn’t turn any heads in an audit of MPs browsing habits.

Is There Any Proof?

Surprisingly, we weren’t able to get any politicians to confirm that they were using Twitter to watch porn in order to bypass transparency laws.

But we did speak to staffers in the Coalition, Labor and the Greens who all confirmed that their bosses were conscious of the fact that when they were viewing websites on Parliamentary assets, the data could be logged and published.

I was hacked overnight! I was ? at 2am. Someone tried to hack my social media yesterday. Maybe they are making mischief over the plebiscite?

— Christopher Pyne (@cpyne) November 15, 2017

Now it seems like an obvious solution to all this might be just… not watching porn on a Parliamentary computer. But politicians are (relatively) normal people. They also tend to work pretty late. It’s not completely unfathomable that some of them might get tempted to watch some porn after hours (it’s worth noting that both the Pyne and Hunt likes occurred in the early hours of the morning). In those cases, a brief Twitter browse could be the perfect option. All the pleasure, none of the risk.

Matthew Landauer, one of the brains behind Right To Know, a website that makes it super easy for people to lodge and browse Freedom of Information requests told Junkee that “given the lack of technical understanding that exists [in Parliament] it wouldn’t surprise if all sorts of nonsense was passed around as sound advice”.

“The idea of watching porn on Twitter as somehow protecting yourself from Freedom of Information is possibly just silly enough that it’s believed,” he said.

One former staffer told Junkee that another possibility is that politicians get followed by Twitter porn bots, which sends them a notification. Some of them might get curious and check out the profile, have a bit of a cheeky scroll and in the process inadvertently like a tweet or two.

It’s definitely a possibility.

Why Did You Make Me Read About Politicians And Porn?

Look, it’s a good question. The recent spate of unfortunate porn likes made us think the situation warranted a bit of investigation.

There’s still no definitive proof as to what’s behind it all, and there’s a remote chance it could be hackers trying to cause mischief.

But here’s our conclusion: People like porn. Politicians are people. Politicians want to watch porn. Politicians don’t want people to know they watch porn.

When you look at it like that it really feels like we’ve stumbled onto the real story.