What the FOSTA/SESTA anti-sex trafficking bill means for sex workers
To add some context to this, here&#x27;s a summary post that&#x27;s being shared in the sex worker community. Not included yet: Amazon delisting many &quot;adult themed&quot; fiction (ie text, not graphics) e-books and removing them from sales figures, and a mass migration to&#x2F;adoption of Protonmail and signal.<p>You can keep up with this issue on Twitter by following the #FuckSESTA tag.<p>---<p>SESTA passed Congress a week ago. It still hasn&#x27;t been signed into law, yet in the past week all of the following have already happened:<p>* 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.<p>* 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 &quot;Missed Connections&quot; board was also briefly taken down, before being migrated elsewhere.<p>* 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&#x27;s work as Google has banned performers from saving their own content once it gets flagged.<p>* Consensual Sex Work advertising sites CityVibe and Nightshift have shut down completely.<p>* Microsoft has banned all &quot;inappropriate&quot; or &quot;offensive&quot; content from its platforms. They claim they reserve the right to view everyone&#x27;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.<p>SESTA isn&#x27;t even law yet and it has already destroyed internet freedom. This bill impacts everyone and will completely change how humans are &quot;allowed&quot; 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.