When social media silences sex workers, we all lose.
Female Presenting Nipples Anyone?
In 2018, Tumblr banned “female-presenting nipples” to crack down on adult content. Almost overnight, thousands of women saw their accounts deactivated as algorithms purged the platform of nudity. In the crossfire were artists, sex workers, models, photographers, and survivors who had built communities on Tumblr to explore sexuality, body positivity, and gender identity. Their voices were silenced as Tumblr tried to sanitize its reputation.
This reactionary move was prompted by the passing of FOSTA-SESTA, controversial legislation marketed as an anti-sex trafficking measure. In reality, it pushed consensual sex work back into dangerous shadows while doing little to stop coerced trafficking. Tumblr’s nipple ban was the first of many blows to women’s sexual agency online, all under the guise of promoting decency.
Since then, we’ve seen similar crackdowns across social media. Accounts are frozen for showing too much skin, while harassers face few repercussions. Actress and model Emily Ratajkowski’s Instagram photos have been removed, though they depict no more nudity than a typical Renaissance painting. On TikTok, sexually suggestive dance trends result in bans, while extremist content spreads unchecked. And Twitch streamers live in fear of showing the slightest cleavage or wearing form-fitting workout clothes that could be deemed “too sexy” by moderators.
Female bodies are treated as inherently dangerous and shameful, censored for making others “uncomfortable,” while vitriol and misogyny hide in plain sight. Under the banner of protecting women, corporations are instead denying women control over their bodies and self-expression.
Nowhere is this more evident than in the ongoing suppression of sex workers on social media. Platforms once crucial to their safety and livelihoods, like Craigslist and Backpage, have shut down completely under legal pressure. Disputes with payment processors cut sex workers off from income overnight, with no chance to download content they have put months of work into. Entire communities of mentors, client screeners, and support groups have been fractured across Snapchat, Reddit, OnlyFans, and more.
Sex workers do not have the luxury of closing their eyes and pretending the internet is only a force for good. For them, it has become another realm to be policed and purged. But corporations framing this censorship as “protecting vulnerable people” ignore how it actively endangers sex workers. This willful blindness reveals whose voices and experiences we value — and whose pain remains invisible.
The Digital Lifeline: How Sex Workers Stay Safe Online
For sex workers worldwide, the internet provides an irreplaceable lifeline. Online platforms grant safety, community, and autonomy that would have been unimaginable decades ago. By leveraging technology, sex workers have built vital digital infrastructure to protect themselves in an often hostile world.
The ability to thoroughly screen potential clients online prevents countless incidents of rape, assault, robbery, and murder. Sex workers share databases of known dangerous clients, harassment incidents, and other safety tips. Platforms like Tryst and Switter even integrate screening directly, requiring clients to provide work and identity verification. Without these precautions, sex workers are defenseless against violence. Tragically, banning sex workers from advertising online removes the tools that keep them safe. After FOSTA-SESTA shut down sites like Backpage, sex workers reported their rape rates rose by over 24% almost instantly. Being forced back onto the streets, with no way to screen unfamiliar clients, put them in mortal danger. The ability to select clients is quite literally a matter of life and death.
The digital community also gives sex workers a crucial support network and a sense of solidarity. Hashtags on Twitter and Instagram enable advice sharing, political organizing, and emotional support. Experienced sex workers mentor newcomers on safety tactics, worker rights, and mental health. Groups on Reddit and Discord provide judgment-free camaraderie for venting and celebration. This community uplifts and cares for members when no one else does. Isolation exacerbates the stigma and trauma of sex work. But finding kindred spirits online fosters confidence and resilience, providing the understanding that sex workers are not alone in their struggles.
Sex workers generously share resources online to help comrades thrive. Crowdsourced public lists offer health services, housing programs, legal help, and educational grants catering to sex workers. Advice forums provide tips on financial literacy, tax filing, and avoiding banking discrimination. Access to specialized resources and education empowers sex workers to take control of their well-being, protecting their health, finances, and careers without relying on outside help.
Without an online community, many sex workers would be isolated. The ability to make meaningful connections, joke, and express creativity provides a social lifeline. Digital spaces became a vital tether to the outside world during the pandemic. For marginalized groups, the internet provides friendships society denies them. No one can thrive emotionally surrounded only by hostility. But the empathy of fellow sex workers offers the social bonds that everyone needs. In a landscape that refuses to understand them, sex workers have built their own spaces of affirmation online.
On social media, sex workers raise awareness of injustice and amplify each other’s voices. Hashtags track violence and challenge stigma. TikTok and Twitter threads reach wide audiences. Videos document abusive encounters and dangerous clients. High-profile cases of violence or discrimination are signal-boosted. Sex workers use their online platforms to shape narratives and share the reality of their lives. This visibility contradicts the lies that enable discrimination. Public awareness humanizes sex workers and exposes abuse. Visibility saves lives.
Digital organizing enables sex workers to challenge unjust laws and build political power. They pressure lawmakers, fund legal challenges, and share voting guides. Sex workers identify allies to uplift into office at local and national levels. History shows that politicians habitually make policies that endanger sex workers under the guise of helping them. The ability to collectively organize online allows sex workers to finally have a voice in the laws that govern their lives. After being shut out for so long, they are claiming a seat at the table.
Ultimately, sex workers turn to the internet for the same reason as us — it helps them provide for themselves and their loved ones. Digital platforms enable them to earn a stable living safely, ethically, and on their terms. Without it, they are forced into dependence, danger, and poverty. Sex work has always existed, and it always will. But criminalization harms those simply trying to survive in an unfair system. The internet opened a path to prosperity free from exploitation. Taking that away robs sex workers of their best chance at independence.
Owning Your Body, Owning Your Voice
At its heart, consensual sex work is about bodily autonomy — the right to make choices about your own body and profit from those choices. People sell their talents, whether strength, intellect, creativity, or appearance, in nearly every industry. Sex work is stigmatized precisely because it centers the female body as a source of power and leverage.
Of course, exploitative practices exist. But ending complex problems like human trafficking requires nuance, not condemning entire categories of work. Listening to sex workers is key — they know best what they need to stay safe and earn a livelihood with dignity. Data shows decriminalization helps them operate with clarity, reporting abuse and paying taxes like other businesses. Sex work becomes dangerous when it’s forced into the margins.
Yet retaining control over their bodies and voices is exactly what women are denied online. Pressure from lawmakers and moral crusaders has steadily erased sex workers from the modern public square of social media. Midriffs and lingerie photos are labeled dangerous. Advocacy groups are silenced as sex trafficking. Sex workers are left begging not to be kicked off platforms that provide community, security, and income.
This cautionary tale makes clear that all women’s rights are intertwined. Politicians paint censorship as protecting vulnerable people. But their policies always creep beyond this limited goal. If we sacrifice sex workers’ rights to appease the censors, ours will be next. The precedent has already been set.
A Reckoning for Big Tech Is Coming
Silicon Valley rode the mythos of digital libertarianism to dominance, selling empowerment and connection. But marginalized groups have always seen the flaws behind friendly branding. For them, the internet has been both a lifeline and a tool of discrimination.
Sex workers were among the first to be sacrificed in tech’s pivot toward the mainstream. Craigslist censored their ads, Tumblr deleted their communities, and OnlyFans turned against them under political pressure. A realm once seen as an escape from judgment became another place they didn’t belong.
Of course, tech platforms are businesses, not public goods. Their incentives lie in maximizing profits, not upholding civil rights. But a rebellion has been brewing as users recognize the scope of manipulation. Younger generations don’t take corporate platitudes at face value — and they make up the coveted market share.
The tide is turning toward social media as infrastructure, not private enterprise. That means obligations to serve the public, as phone companies are required to connect calls. But no legal framework exists to guarantee free speech on social networks or protect vulnerable communities.
Public pressure is the only recourse until laws catch up to technology’s influence. Boycotts, bad PR, and employee activism can push companies toward justice. Unsurprisingly, most social networks’ policies still fail to reflect their diverse user bases. The town square must welcome everyone or fail at its very purpose.
Restoring Trust in the Digital Landscape
The early internet blossomed with idealism, promising to amplify marginalized voices and decentralize power. But as tech consolidated into monopolies, empowerment was abandoned for profit-seeking and paternalistic censorship. Rebuilding an open and just digital landscape will require sustained effort on multiple fronts. But the goal of equal access and platform freedom cannot remain an empty myth.
As a first step, we must challenge the premise that marginalized communities must be expelled for their protection. Bans on consensual adult content must be revisited and overturned. Sex workers deserve access to public digital spaces, not exile from them. Protecting free expression and bodily autonomy should be non-negotiable baseline values.
In place of discriminatory blanket bans, ethical content moderation requires carefully crafted policies developed alongside impacted communities. Sex workers, for example, have unique insights on addressing abusive material while allowing voluntary erotic expression. Their input is essential for crafting nuanced rules not rooted in stigma. No policy about vulnerable groups should be made without their equal participation.
Likewise, corporate censorship that proves dangerous for marginalized users should face coordinated public scrutiny. Activist campaigns, critical press coverage, boycotts, and internal protests must continue until unjust policies change. Tech companies should never feel insulated from public accountability. Their past aura of reverence must give way to healthy skepticism.
To resist monopolization further, we must materially support independent platforms created by and for marginalized groups. Donations, investments, subscriptions, and ethical advertising can help these niche sites flourish as alternatives to centralized corporate behemoths. Thriving digital ecosystems have space for multitudes. Homogenization serves no one, especially excluded communities.
Additionally, laws like FOSTA-SESTA that endanger sex workers under the pretense of protecting them must be replaced with policies informed by data and sex worker advocates. Prohibition has never eradicated consensual vices — it just harms those involved. Legislators must reject paternalism and embrace harm reduction. Sex workers themselves know best what regulations could empower rather than endanger them.
Most importantly, we must remember that attacks on one vulnerable group easily spread to threaten us all. Standing up for sex workers’ rights means affirming everyone’s right to bodily autonomy and self-expression online. We can only guard against the centralization of power in disempowered hands through solidarity and coalition-building. No voices should be silenced for another’s idea of the greater good.
A few powerful tech companies now dominate public discourse online, operating without democratic checks. But public accountability starts with placing basic principles of social responsibility over profit incentives. A corporation may not be legally bound to uphold civil liberties, but it should face moral condemnation when failing to do so. Grounding tech in ethics, not just markets, must guide reform.
Fundamentally, we need to reframe the Internet as a public infrastructure, not just a private enterprise. Online spaces are modern gathering places essential for access to knowledge, community, and opportunity. The companies who maintain this infrastructure take on civic duties, regardless of their corporate structure or investor priorities. We cannot continue to cede control of rights and liberties to unaccountable capitalistic forces. The open internet should be treated as a public trust, not a commodity.
Of course, establishing binding standards for rights and liberties online requires legislation to catch up to tech’s influence. In lieu of that, pressure campaigns, boycotts, investigative journalism, employee activism, and public debate are our only recourse. The groundwork of imagining a just digital future starts with a discussion. What regulations would foster empowerment? How can we encode principles of equality? The answers will only emerge through collaboration.
It may seem idealistic to demand technology elevate marginalized voices rather than suppress them. But we should not underestimate the power of envisioning alternate realities. Today’s limits are no more eternal than those of decades past. Technology mirrors society’s values. Currently, only profit is valued. But the cultural tides are shifting as marginalized groups gain political and economic power. The future remains unwritten.
A digital world welcoming for all requires dismantling corporate hegemonies and paternalistic laws. Sex workers and other marginalized creators point the way forward in modeling community care online. Their resilience proves the grit required to forge spaces of liberation amidst rampant dehumanization. But collective struggle builds on countless humble acts of compassion. Whose voices will we amplify today? And who will we center in tomorrow’s digital landscape?
I’m Joan. Transgender. Solopreneur. Tech writer. Founded studio self, a marketing agency, community, & product lab. We publish The Index, an indie tech publication & more.
