Is It Worth It? Let Me EARN It.
Sex workers are marketing experts, but legislation is always quick on their (platform) heels to tear down their digital empires. Since I last wrote about the struggle of online sex work, more legislation has come down the pipe to threaten the safety of these workers. Why governments have time to focus on this and not updating school plans for the fall is beyond me, but let’s focus on one issue at a time...
From my favourite page: @exotic.cancer
We know that it's common for media to be popularized by erotic content. No duh. People love porn and will seek it out wherever it’s available. Sex workers, by extension, have spearheaded the majority of platforms we use today. It's equally as common, however, for these sites to implement harsh regulation updates after they’ve developed large user bases. From the first pop-up adds to chat rooms to OnlyFans, sex workers have carved out our digital spaces only to be forced off platforms in favour of cleaner content. It's a cycle of digital gentrification that spans the history of the internet, and it has no intention of stopping for a pandemic.
Great Question
Once again, legislation is coming down that threatens the safety of sex workers. The Eliminating Abusive and Rampant Neglect of Interactive Technologies Act, EARN IT for short, has big dreams of making the internet safer for children. Of course, there are some fundamental flaws in its method.
First, it's important to understand the grey area of regulating online spaces. User-generated platforms, for example, have an inherent dilemma: they need people's contributions to stay afloat, but some people us post terrible things.
Think about your favourite social media website. Without your content, what does the service provide? Now, what would happen if everyone decide to post about murdering cats? This is the problem with freedom of speech in general. "You can say whatever you want, but please don’t make us look bad" is the general mood, but it's also not something you can reinforce without dicing into the realm of censorship.
Moreover, everyone is currently stuck at home. Unsurprisingly, online activity has skyrocketed. I know my phone activity report looks eerily like the Florida COVID case curve, and, based on how many people are reading this newsletter each week, I imagine that yours does as well... It follows that online crime would also spike. Gmail, for example, finds 240 million spam emails related to COVID per day.
EARN IT is presented as a way to help eliminate this online crime. It poses that media giants turn a blind eye to illegal activity on their platforms, so they want to hold them more accountable. The quickest way to achieve accountability, as we know from the Super Nanny, is to threaten consequences. Online service providers are presently protected through Section 230 immunity, which, coincidentally, sounds exactly like something that would be written into a dystopian pandemic storyline.
Simply put, Section 230 prevents these platforms from “liability for the actions of their users”. Essentially it allows tech giants to create spaces where users can be themselves. It shouldn't matter what your users post, because the tech companies are only there to provide the stage.
Alas, sometimes being yourself leads to child sex trafficking, and EARN IT is trying to prevent huge platforms from letting illegal material slide on their sites. The premise being that, if you’re hosting, you’re responsible for your guests. The Airbnb way to understand social media accountability.
With EARN IT, the only way for online service providers to maintain their Section 230 immunity is to comply with a to-be-determined set of "best practices." Seems vague, but okay.
The act states that it has a specific interest in child sexual exploitation, but critics are dubious. Like FOSTA before it, EARN IT is presented under the guise of helping the children, but it seems like there is more at play. To start, child porn is already highly illegal and providers are federally required to report it.
So what is this really about? If we already have measures in place to help abused children, why spend the time and effort on this new act? It makes it seem like they’re getting something else by requiring online platforms to adhere to new rules.
Seriously you need to follow her: @exotic.cancer
Cens-whore-ship
Surprise! They totally are.
EARN IT, at its core, is an anti-encryption act that is using sex trafficking as a positioning tactic. That might sound a little tinfoil hat-y, but there’s a basis for it. Don’t worry, I’m not going to get too technical here, but I’ll give you the basics.
These aforementioned “best practices” will require online companies to provide access for law enforcement to view private data and communications. Ruh-roh.
The data that presently exists about users on these sites is encrypted, meaning your information is housed and protected within their infrastructures (what they do with it is another story). Allowing for access of user data leads to some pretty serious privacy concerns. As we already know, online crime is up. Opening a door to information means people can sneak through. If it’s not air tight, mold gets in. How many times have you opened your bag to see conditioner, pen ink, or salsa sloshing around? If the crack is there, the leak will happen. One article puts it in the most eloquent way possible “a backdoor is a backdoor,” which, oddly enough, sounds pretty similar to the BC recommendation of glory holes during COVID. Even without leaks though, how much do we want that information readily available for police?
EARN IT is also creating a convenient excuse for media censorship. The pros of having user-generated platforms are to create spaces where information flows freely. I can post about a “Karen” at Walmart and save an employee from wrongful termination. You can share your sourdough recipe and get 3 likes. It’s an open forum.
EARN IT, however, will force companies to regulate what content people are able to post online. Yes, the act specifies it’s looking to prevent child porn. That said, if you were a media giant, would you run the risk of having anything racy on your site? Probably not. Having Section 230 immunity stripped will likely force large platforms to restructure their user policies. Why even flirt with the idea of a lawsuit if you can censor your users instead? Hey, it’s my party, I can delete your post if I want to.
Managing user-generated content like this has it’s own slew of issues. The Electronic Frontier Foundation puts it pretty simply:
“Just as Congress cannot pass a law demanding news media cover specific stories or present the news a certain way, it similarly cannot direct how and whether online platforms host user-generated content.”
In other words: stop telling us what we're allowed and not allowed to share, and maybe try to figure out how to control the GOD DAMN PANDEMIC we are in the middle of. Please and thanks.
When are These Colonies Going to Rise Up?
Back to the “Karen” example:
We all know that internet doxing is out of control. How scary is it to know that your information is at risk? I can assure you that it’s scarier if you have stalkers, protestors, and predators searching for your address. This is concerning to everyone, but much more for a group who is posting vulnerable content as a means to survive. One of the huge pros of bringing sex work online is that it creates a barrier between the worker and client. That is entirely eliminated when information begins to circle.
And that's assuming these platforms are even still available to use. As media giants try to clean house and regulate user content, one of the first elements to go is nudity. When sex is involved, accounts get banned, deleted and censored in ways that makes it next to impossible to build up a viable business.
So what’s a girl who sells feet pics over Facebook to do? It’s a big question. Sex workers are forced inside because of COVID (though many exist online primarily to begin with), and now the revenue streams they depend on are being forced to alter their regulations. How do you build a following or a brand when your content is being censored? Where can you turn? Unfortunately, sometimes that answer is the street. Even in a digital age, there are fewer and fewer places where it’s safe to be a sex worker.
To protest, sex workers, artists, clients, and allies are throwing a virtual event on August 21st called E-Viction. They are marketing it as “a virtual arthouse / wh0re gallery” that will exist as a digital hub for 12 hours before self destructing. Unlike social media, "E-Viction is the only de-platforming you can prepare for in advance." Brilliant.
Here are some fun things to expect as we rally to “resist the sanitization, gentrification, and corporatization of the internet":
Art and sex on live cam.
A virtual peepshow
Online store for art and toys
Raunchy chat rooms
Legislation education
You can register for free here, but please be ready to tip and support!
Nice going Angelica
You Will Never Be Satisfied
Online safety is a complex issue namely because of who we're trying to protect. The clear answer is ourselves, but the internet isn't only comprised of people we know. And, truthfully, it's more a safe haven for marginalized groups than it is for us. That is, of course, until we implement ways of gentrifying the space.
Recently my partner and I went to Hamilton for a day trip. Not the play, unfortunately, but the Ontario city.
In the COVID world it’s challenging to justify living in Toronto. Generally you can get over the obscene cost and lack of space in the city because it’s subsidized by proximity and an endless stream of entertainment. Young city dwellers live like rats in the crevices of nicer homes for the thrill of what may be found in dumpsters nearby. Only now those dumpsters are empty, and the field mice in Brampton are starting to look like they had the right idea…
Hamilton is somewhat of a happy medium between they city and the burbs. It has affordable homes, breweries, a waterfront, and the cutest coffee shops your Instagram Discover page could imagine. It's essentially millennial hipster heaven.
I was quite literally skipping along St. James Street in a yellow sundress last weekend, gawking at vintage stores, when we suddenly found ourselves in the middle of a fight. Not just a kerfuffle, but a full blown glass attack that left a man bleeding from ear to ear in front of Jackson square. Addicts all around were shooting up between their toes and nomadic onlookers were screaming from across the street that the cops were on their way. I felt like I had crossed some invisible line (invisible string? Folklore anyone?) into a darker Hamilton. A rough side of the adorable street where the remaining homeless and helpless had congregated. A last dance in the core of the growing city.
When we left (thankfully without any blood splatter on my dress) I kept thinking that the street was only a year or two away from being cleaned up and picturesque. Value in the neighbourhood is only going up, which means the number of street fights is likely to go down. The gentrification has already been underway for years, and, depressingly, people living on the streets will be forced to find new haunts that don't deter from the city's downtown sites.
What it shows it that, even as city folk, we only tolerate some unwholesome behaviour. So quickly we forget that these are the people who built the city. The ones who saw the charm before we saw the affordability, who kept the property values low enough for us to even consider.
At what point do you abandon all character and wash a city into a carbon copy of any other suburb? And at what point do you allow your dream of endless ice cream shops to supersede your compassion to help these people?
In the real world it's jarring, but on digital spaces, it's even easier to turn a blind eye. Maybe people are screaming from online street corners, but you're likely not going to run into them by accident. Algorithms are much too advanced for that. No, our digital worlds are curated to our taste levels, and the media behemoths censor what goes too far.
We love instagram because it rewards bikini pictures, but a nipple is too salacious. Hamilton is cute because it has coffee shops that your feed hasn’t seen yet, but the drug problems are something that will eventually be “taken down”
Seeing this motley crew of people laying claim to their corner, shrieking across the street to each other, making their presence known, is a sad but relevant reflection of what is happening in the online space. Sex workers are resilient and cunning. They will find a new platform, create a new market, push forward and adapt into the next revenue stream. They are incredible at it because their livelihoods depend on it.
Is there not a way we can give them a corner of the internet that is safe to use? In a world where land acknowledgments happen before every meeting, can we acknowledge the digital space that we use as well. If it weren’t for tits and ass, none of us would be on Paypal.
Alas, until all of our spaces look the way we (or our governments) want them too, we won't be satisfied. Online sex workers are destined to be digital nomads in a losing battle to online sanitation. We will continue to follow them everywhere and clean up what they create for our own purposes, so I think the least we can do is buy a nude every once in awhile.
Also apologies for all of the Hamilton references. We watched it three times and I wasn't throwing away my shot on this one...
