Out today — International Day to End Violence Against Sex Workers — from the Electronic Frontier Foundation on the FOSTA debacle:
Today is International Day to End Violence Against Sex Workers, an annual observation supported by and dedicated to those that participate in the sex trade. It’s also nearly the end of 2019—the first full calendar year since Congress passed the Internet censorship law SESTA/FOSTA.
EFF fought the bill in Congress, concerned that its vague, ambiguous language and stiff criminal and civil penalties would drive constitutionally protected content off the Internet. And we represent organizations and individuals that are challenging the law in federal court. Activists and organizers from within the sex working community made it clear from the beginning as well: though this bill was intended to curb violence that occurs in the sex trade, its result would be just the opposite because it deprived a community of many of the online tools they used to stay safe and to organize. 2019 has brought us the unfortunate statistics to prove that they were right.
In a recent study of sex workers completed by the grassroots sex worker advocacy organization Hacking//Hustling, in collaboration with Whose Corner Is It Anyway, 40% of participants reported experiencing increased violence after FOSTA became law. Additionally, an overwhelming 99% of participants said they do not feel safer because of FOSTA. The details of this study were recently reviewed at a conference hosted by Harvard’s Berkman Klein Law Center, and the full results will soon be available. But these grim statistics aren’t an outlier: last year the San Francisco Police Department reported that human trafficking and street-based sex work offenses had spiked 170% since FOSTA’s passage.
