“Disadvantaged in the American-dominated Internet”: Sex, Work, and Technology

Risk, Resilience and Reward: Impacts of Shifting to Digital Sex Work

“…More recently, scholars have further explored how in-person sex workers advertise online, strategise for their digital and physical safety, and are discriminated against by digital platforms [90,15,24,25,23]. Relatedly, Cowen and Impacts of Shifting to Digital Sex Work A PREPRINT Colosi propose that digital sex work platforms be encouraged for safety reason, through a theoretical "transaction cost framework" analysis.…”

“…In line with prior work [15,14,107], we do not refer by name to platforms and tools that our participants used for sex work 1 in order to protect the sex workers using them. We have also anonymized place names and any other identifying information.…”

“…To mitigate these risks, sex worker scholars such as Sophie Ladder [80] and Amberly Rothfield [110] intensively analyse the differences in terms of service between platforms and communicate what sex workers are and are not allowed to include in their content, bios and messaging. Participants described being highly attentive to the Terms of Service despite the fact that content moderation, as previously documented, was not equitably or consistently applied, and frequently regulates identity as a sex worker, not just sexual content [25,15]. Complicated navigation of each platform was a common theme in the interviews: "[Social media site] is a lot harder, you can't post any nudes on [SMS] or imply nudes on [SMS].…”

“…First, participants reported in engaging in identity management, e.g., wearing wigs, obscuring tattoos, or even using digital tools to edit their photos to look less like themselves: "I can do quite a lot of editing on things like my face, not just blurring, also flipping photos and there's a certain level of editing that goes on to try to maximise my anonymity as much as possible." (P15) These approaches overlap with strategies participants and other in-person sex workers use such as advertising without showing their faces [34,15].…”

“…Our participants reported frequent interactions with clients who harassed them. In-person sex workers typically screen new clients using a variety of screening methods [15]. However, the current platform technologies available to online sex workers do not allow pro-active screening.…”