There’s a lot of horrifying BS coming out of Washington DC this year, and a few loud stories tend to crowd the news cycle at any given moment. And not many of them are actual policy decisions unaccompanied by misspelled presidential tweets.
So unless you have friends who work in the sex industry, you may not have heard of FOSTA and SESTA – let alone what they mean for sex workers, sex trafficking victims and internet freedom. So let’s spell it out, literally:
FOSTA = Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act
SESTA = Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act
Based on the names of the bills alone, they seem like a great idea, right? I think we can universally agree that sex trafficking is a bad thing that should be stopped.
Unfortunately, it’s not that simple. The legislation’s messy, broad wording doesn’t specifically target traffickers, but everyone working in the sex industry – including people engaged in consensual sex work.
What does it do?
The aim of the bills is to stop sex trafficking by blocking the internet as a tool for traffickers. It does this by making an exemption to section 230 of the Communications Decency Act which is widely considered one of the most important pieces of legislation in regard to online freedoms.
The exemption means that anyone who owns, manages or operates a website would be held criminally responsible if third parties use their platform to “promote or facilitate” sex work.
Not trafficking. Sex work.
Sophie Amina is an Australian based sex worker and sex-work support worker who has been in the industry for over 10 years in both Australia and the US. She says the broad nature of this legislation is massively problematic for workers who currently use just about any online platform, including social media, to advertise their work. But she also points out that advertising is not the only way online platforms “facilitate” sex work.
“Sex workers have traditionally used a lot of websites for advertising, but also for keeping each other safe and keeping each other informed,” she says. “All of that now is basically under threat.”
“Certain ‘bad date’ sites which warn other sex workers about problematic clients, or abusive clients have already felt the effects and have shut down pre-emptively to avoid being held liable, because the consequences legally are quite severe for certain sites.
“This legislation means people who rely on the internet to conduct their work safely is they are going to be moving into unsafe spaces.”
Why is it problematic?
Even on a surface level, this bill is dangerous for two main reasons: it’s destroying the livelihoods of legal sex work professionals, both monetarily and safety-wise; and it’s making sex trafficking victims more vulnerable.
Sophie says rather than helping eradicate sex trafficking, these bills are going to push it further underground, making it harder to identify and stop.
“At least when things were online that stuff was potentially more visible,” she points out. “Now that it’s being removed from the internet, how are you going to find it to stop it?
“People are going to be harder to reach out to if they are being exploited or are in abusive situations or are being trafficked. The two laws really go against what they aspire to achieve.”
The belief that these bills are actually counterproductive to ending sex is also held by the largest network of anti-trafficking support providers in the US, Freedom Network USA. The organisation submitted a formal opposition to Congress prior to the bill being passed, saying the bill will “actually harm victims and consensual commercial sex workers” and that the bills “expands the criminalisation of consensual commercial sex work under the guise of addressing sex trafficking”.
Even the US Department of Justice isn’t on board with the legislation. While the DOJ had more technical concerns, the fact that they’ve said these bills would “violate the constitution” and raise “serious constitutional concern” are probably a pretty good indication that they’re not well-made legislation.
Why should we care?
The effects of FOSTA-SESTA won’t only be felt in the US, but in the sex industry internationally. Sophie explains that these bills are already impacting the industry in Australia. “Even though the two pieces of legislation are in the US they are having that far-reaching effect because most of the platforms that we all use globally are US created, so they fall under that legislation.”
That’s really the problem. Everybody will feel the effects of these bills, to varying degrees, because the legislation intrinsically depends on internet censorship. The American Civil Liberties Union addressed the wide-reaching ramifications of the bills in their opposition to Congress, stating: “the bill will foster an atmosphere of hesitation among online platform providers. This uncertainty will inhibit the continued growth of the internet as a place of creativity and innovation”.
This legislation has already been devastating for the legal sex industry internationally, but its central premise of holding websites liable for what people use it for also sets a dangerous precedent in terms of internet censorship.
Right now, it might not seem like it’ll affect you directly – but it doesn’t mean it won’t. And even if you’re not a part of the sex industry, you should care about any policy that makes people less safe at work.