Surveillance / Survival

“Sex work has become the prototype for policing cyberspace.”

“All that was once negotiated on the street is now also conducted on public Web sites, and under more watchful (and curious) and tracking eyes than ever.”

“If you went on Craigslist to look for a sex work ad, you would find it next to apartment ads or other job ads, and I think that was another reason they were such a target. It made sex work adjacent to anything else people might be doing online.”

“Selling sex-oriented services, photos, and goods are one of the few businesses that are profitable on the Internet… Fortunately, many of the industry sites have chosen to rate themselves ‘Adult’ with the SafeSurf Rating System™, or many other of the ‘Adult Check’ types of programs, and are included in our ‘SafeSurf Rated Adult’ database.”

“SurfWatch is a real alternative to Internet censorship, giving parents and educators the opportunity to limit unwanted material locally without restricting the access rights of other Internet users.”

“It used to be on the bathroom walls in pencil. Now it’s on your students’ workstations in 256 colors.”

“President Clinton will make some exciting announcements on how we can give parents not just a tool, but a virtual tool box, to help them screen out inappropriate material and steer them to the positive wonders of the Internet. But before he does, let me say a word about the promising new technologies that are already available to help parents stop the dirt at the digital door.”

“Every time we pioneer a certain space, we’re then pushed off of it.”

“Digital sanitation is sold as making the internet safer. But, as with any gentrification, the question is, safer for whom, and at the expense of what pre-existing communities?”

“Where the Internet has opened up opportunities for [sex workers] to take control of their work by increasing their direct access to customers, it has also given law enforcement, politicians, and assorted anti–sex work types a highly visible and vulnerable place to attack. They claim they’re ‘protecting’ sex workers when they demand that publishers refuse their ads. But for the workers themselves, losing ad venues means losing control over how they negotiate at work.”

“As of today for all US craigslist sites, postings to the ‘erotic services’ category will no longer be accepted, and in 7 days the category will be removed.”

“The beauty of [Craigslist’s] Adult Services, compared to other listing sites such as Backpage or CityVibe, was that a provider was in total control over how much information she wanted to share. The anonymous email feature and automatic expiration specific to CL ads meant that posters could communicate with prospective clients without giving away information that would make them vulnerable to stalking — or allow their temporary choice to haunt them on the Internet for eternity.”

“Black people of any marginalized gender are automatically seen as sex workers. Therefore, how Black people are treated affects how sex workers are treated, and how sex workers are treated affects how Black people are seen and treated.”

“The story of sex work in the United States is partly one of a constantly migrating community. Newspapers banned their ads, so they moved online. Craigslist abandoned them, so they moved to Redbook or Rentboy. Those went under, and they moved to Backpage. Backpage was seized, so they migrated to Tumblr. Tumblr banned NSFW content, so they moved to Twitter, OnlyFans, and anywhere left that will allow them to be seen, heard, and survive.”

“A few days after Backpage was shut down by federal authorities, Public Law 115-164, better known as FOSTA-SESTA, became US law in 2017. The stated goal of this law was to reduce human trafficking by amending section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. What the law has actually done is put increased pressure on Internet platforms to censor their users. ”

“It’s supposed to be a bill that helps end sex trafficking. What it really does is harm sex workers, and victims of sex trafficking…This law makes it much harder to even find [traffickers] as it’s pushed them underground to the dark web.”

“The hammer started coming down even sooner than we expected, before the ink on the bill had even dried. Sites began to self-police and interpret the legislation in a broad manner. In the days after, in the week after, we watched numbly as the Craigslist personals, Reddit’s sex work-related subreddits, Cityvibe, The Erotic Review’s U.S. boards and eventually all U.S. access to the site, Nightshift, Men4Rent.com, Eccie, and too many others to name—all of these avenues were lost to us.”

“At this point in the SESTApocalypse, as I finally emerge from the paralyzing fog of wtf-wtf-wtf around the death of our business model, we’re all sick of thinking and talking about it. We’re sick of wondering how the hell we’re going to manage, sick of watching high-end workers become paranoiac internet security experts, sick of low-end workers being driven back to the streets.”

“These kinds of platforms were really essential. Losing these tools caused more harm to our community, because we couldn’t keep each other safe as easily.”

“with apologies to craig i needed an easy to remember url for this document
but also thanks craig your list helped a lot of people make ends meet while it was available for sex workers
it saved lives”

“We’ve found over 150 companies, institutions, and discrete products (like Skype or Youtube) that in some way discriminate or ban sex work or adult products OR have been shut down completely following increased anti-sex work legislation.”

“If you’re not a sex worker, and you’ve landed here, imagine trying to run your business, or just live your daily life, without access to all these commonly used things. Keep in mind that when sex workers are pushed off these platforms, they’re often pushed off altogether and permanently under any name even if they are not actually using that platform for sex work.”

“‘Erased’ was entirely funded by client donations and my human footstool, a sex work client who was paying me and my co-researcher to ignore him while we were writing it. It just shows the ingenuity and strength – and necessity – of community-produced research, and how quickly we can mobilize and produce with the limited resources we have.”

“Sex workers are disappearing from the Internet. Workers’ sites have been taken down, ad sites are hard to comply with and are always changing their rules, Twitter and Instagram are deleting accounts just for being a sex worker.”

“Whole entire sites have disappeared! Or been changed, or deleted! Forums for sex workers providing safety info, info for screening clients, escort ad sites, etc.”

“Dearest friends, lovers, clients, and voyeurs, One year ago today, in the middle of an apocalyptic summer of pandemic and unrest, you attended E-viction, a virtual art show by Veil Machine… You participated in an immersive, online arthouse wh0re gallery that emerged in a flash and disappeared at midnight after a spectacular self-destruction.”

“E-Viction is our attempt to apply the kind of innovation that sex workers exhibit online in order to create a new form of digital protest.”

“This is not an ending. This is just the beginning. If there is a way out, sex working artists will be the ones to carve it. We are building, we are imagining. We are seducing, we are destroying.”