
What the FOSTA/SESTA anti-sex trafficking bill means for sex workers - anigbrowl
https://www.teenvogue.com/story/fosta-sesta-anti-sex-trafficking-bill
======
anigbrowl
To add some context to this, here's a summary post that's being shared in the
sex worker community. Not included yet: Amazon delisting many "adult themed"
fiction (ie text, not graphics) e-books and removing them from sales figures,
and a mass migration to/adoption of Protonmail and signal.

You can keep up with this issue on Twitter by following the #FuckSESTA tag.

\---

SESTA passed Congress a week ago. It still hasn't been signed into law, yet in
the past week all of the following have already happened:

* Reddit banned most subreddits dedicated to sales. In addition to preventing sex workers from promoting their content, this also banned subreddits dedicated to guns, drugs, and even homebrewing beer.

* Craigslist completely removed their personals section. In addition to preventing sex workers from having a platform to screen potential clients, this means that there is no more meeting people for dating or casual sex via Craigslist. The much-loved "Missed Connections" board was also briefly taken down, before being migrated elsewhere.

* Google Drive banned the sharing of porn, shutting down one of the easiest outlets for performers to send direct-sales and to share edits of content with each other. Many performers lost their entire life's work as Google has banned performers from saving their own content once it gets flagged.

* Consensual Sex Work advertising sites CityVibe and Nightshift have shut down completely.

* Microsoft has banned all "inappropriate" or "offensive" content from its platforms. They claim they reserve the right to view everyone's Skype calls to determine whether any violations occur, which is a huge privacy violation. In addition to preventing cam performers from doing private shows and full service sex workers from screening clients, this also prevents long distance couples from being intimate with each other over camera. These rules also apply to XBox and Office, so one can conceivably be banned for writing erotica on Microsoft Word.

SESTA isn't even law yet and it has already destroyed internet freedom. This
bill impacts everyone and will completely change how humans are "allowed" to
interact with each other. Yet because the bill is explicitly designed to
target sex workers, none of the people who would otherwise be up in arms are
saying anything. The hatred of sex workers will destroy us all unless we all
stand up and fight.

~~~
aphextron
Here me out on this. Maybe the internet needs this. Maybe we need a clear
delineation between the PG, corporate sanctioned mass market internet, and the
real web. I couldn't possibly care less what arbitrary decision Reddit makes
about it's content policies, because that's not how the internet works. No one
will just throw up their hands and say "welp, guess we can't talk about that
stuff anymore.". New communities will form. New services will thrive. This is
a _good_ thing. Perhaps this leads to users taking back the control that was
rightfully theirs in the first place. I honestly feel that the combination of
this legislation, combined with the massive backlash against social media 2.0
and the rise of blockchain tech, we are on the eve of a true paradigm shift
towards Web 3.0.

~~~
AnthonyMouse
> New communities will form. New services will thrive.

The new communities are subject to the same law.

The problem is that the economics of complying with this are entirely
impractical. The only choices are to go bankrupt trying to comply, shut down
the service preemptively, or not comply. The big services know that so they're
shutting down.

The question is how aggressive prosecutors will be about enforcement.

If they're lax then communities will proliferate but they'll all be subject to
destruction at any time because they're breaking the law. So everyone is
living in the dystopian Soviet hell where there is no rule of law, there are
only the whims of government bureaucrats, and all the chilling effects and
self-censorship that comes with it. And entire communities will periodically
be wiped out essentially at random.

Whereas if enforcement is vigorous then the communities will exist because
they'll get better at evading law enforcement by improving security, hosting
in other countries, etc. You end up driving evolution to a level of
lawlessness that nobody wants -- open murder markets etc.

There is no scenario where this can end well, other than repeal.

~~~
GCU-Empiricist
Repeal seams like a good scenario to me. When your negative side effects are
grossly larger than your well intentioned desired effect, repeal is the
reasonable action. We just need politicians willing to eat crow, or someone to
push a rollback against a law that's "anti-badthing" so I'll expect it 3
generations after I'm dead when politicians and voters act on policy and
implications instead of soundbites.

------
DoreenMichele
I don't know how to say this well, and I often get a lot of flak on HN for
trying to say it at all. People don't like having their normal sex life
compared to prostitution in any way, shape or form. But the fact that I get so
much flak suggests it hits a nerve.

There is no clear demarcation between sex work and non commercial sex. Dating
frequently involves a man spending money on a woman in hopes of getting laid.
Sexual relationships almost never occur in isolation from material aspects of
our lives.

As one example, heterosexual sex can lead to babies. So we routinely try to
parse "Can this guy support a child if the union results in one?"

That's a moral question where creating a child and being unable to provide for
it is irresponsible. So there is no means whatsoever to completely separate
money and sexual morality. The relationship between the two is complicated,
but it doesn't work to try to pretend you can simply and conveniently separate
sex and material stuff.

The fact that there is no clear cut demarcation point between non commercial
sex and commercial sex is why Craigslist pulled all its personal sections in
reaction to this. So, logically, this potentially endangers all dating sites
and hookup apps.

One possible path of progression: With no spaces left devoted to the needs of
sex workers, dating sites and hookup apps could become a means of solicitation
and then all activities on such sites would become suspect and no one could
even ask who is paying for coffee when they meet.

I am not very familiar with this legislation, but "throwing the baby out with
the bathwater" doesn't begin to capture the kinds of negative consequences we
are already seeing in reaction to this. This is apparently so deeply anti sex
that it isn't remotely limited to being anti commercial sex.

I find myself baffled at the capacity of the human race to superficially
pretend we are doing something good and moral while just being sexually hung
up and apparently wanting to hatefully punish people for having any sexual
impetus at all.

This is my second attempt to try to express some of this. I would appreciate
it if folks don't scream at me about how sex in their marriage is not an act
of prostitution. It's a pointless derail of the conversation that just makes
me feel "Me thinks thou doth protest too much." It would be nice if people
would stick to the topic of consequences of these laws instead of acting like
I have said "You, yes you, are just buying sex from your wife and she clearly
does not love you." I said no such thing.

~~~
arthur_pryor
I have nothing of substance to add to this comment, but I agree with
absolutely everything you've said, and I hope you don't get downvoted. I can't
really add any nuance, because I don't know where in the weeds we might
disagree.

I realize that my comment isn't very substantive, and I'm pretty low-karma,
but I think you're generally a thoughtful commenter from what I've seen, and I
think more people need to read what you've said and mull it over and at least
do the thought exercise of seeing how they might agree with you, even if they
determine that they ultimately do not agree with you.

Please, let's legalize and regulate prostitution.

~~~
DoreenMichele
Thank you.

For the record, I an not for legalization and regulation. I think if I want to
service a guy for a few bucks, the only thing the government should concern
itself with is me reporting that as earned income on my taxes.

Here is a recent comment by me trying to clarify my understanding of the
difference between legalization and decriminalization, which is something
poorly understood and is a topic with lots of contradictory information:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16673076](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16673076)

~~~
arthur_pryor
oh interesting, esp in light of your other comment's statement that regulated
legalization hasn't made things better for sex workers in vegas.

i think i need to run some errands and do some work instead of scouting
bandcamp and reading HN, but i hope to read your time link and mull that stuff
over later this afternoon/evening. thanks for the opinion/info, even if i
don't have a reply while anyone's still reading this thread (though i'll try
to reply regardless if i think i have something worthwhile to say, if only to
get it out for myself).

i would say that even if i stay thinking that regulation is the right thing in
principle, i'd hope that it'd not be so draconian as to impinge on small
independent operators (a la the blind eye turned to homebrewing and your
average poker game).

without further reading/consideration, i'd still think that a business
composed of multiple people involved in prostitution, or a business space
specifically devoted to it, might be things subject to regulation? or maybe
not even that, i dunno. i'm a big believer in civil liberties and personal
freedom, but i'm also not much for libertarianism (because it doesn't seem
like it always does a good job of maximizing freedom for most people when you
take into account how people behave in groups).

------
yodon
As someone not remotely in the target audience for Teen Vogue, I’m amazed at
how often high grade articles from that masthead appear in my feeds. Not a
title I would have expected to associate with actual journalism

~~~
anigbrowl
Same. They got new editorship a year or two back that questioned the
conventional wisdom that teenage girls are only interested in shallow things
and adjusted the content accordingly, which seems to be working quite well for
them.

------
mattsfrey
Regardless of your political persuasion / values, it seems the common theme in
the last year and moving forward is an insidious removal of civil liberties.

This is how it begins, with the fringe. It only balloons out further from
there.

------
snarfy
As long as you film it you are OK.

