Dec 14th, 2018, 02:05 PM

From the Thot Audit to the Porn Ban

By Jane Addington-May
The Internet's Mounting Campaign Against Sex Workers

The close of 2018 has seen a subtle and strong effort to delegitimize and disenfranchise sex workers who use online platforms, and the past month has been the most significant push yet. The end of November gave rise to the #ThotAudit, an online campaign started by Facebook user identifying himself as David Wu, which encouraged people, men especially, to report sex workers using digital platforms like SnapChat to the IRS. The campaign gained support quickly on Twitter and Reddit threads, and gave rise to an intense outpouring of misogynistic views.

Reporting a Snapchat account to the IRS, however, is not as easy as the self proclaimed 'Thot Patrol' would have it seem. The form in question is 3494-A, which requires the persons full name, address, social security number, and tax years and dollar amounts. The likely hood of successfully reporting someone is low, and even lower is the probability of the IRS following through with an audit, but that doesn't make this fresh wave of hostility any less dangerous.

With auditing largely failing, new tactics were tested, with men sending a small payment to sex workers PayPal accounts and then immediately flagging the transactions as fraud, resulting in the deactivation of their accounts. These methods clearly put into focus the movements true ambition: not patriotism, but blatant misogyny. 

On top of these methods, supporters of the movement began calling for an aggressive doxxing campaign, with one Facebook user going so far as to call for putting the women's information on the dark web to make them easily locatable by human traffickers. In a matter of days it became clear: this was a fear campaign.

Wu (who also operates an account under the name Barry Allen), the campaign's instigator, has come under heavy scrutiny by online communities since his growth in notoriety. He boasts over his 15 thousand followers on Facebook, with most of his posts relating to video games and interspersed with inflammatory posts promoting both misogyny and transphobia. Several allegations have been brought against him by young women claiming he solicited nude photos from them while they were still underage, and that he became verbally abusive and threatened them with doxxing when they either refused or cut off contact. 

The Thot Audit was only one of the recent attacks against sex workers, however. On December 3rd, Tumblr announced a new policy that will come into effect on December 17th banning all adult content, (which, in some cruel irony, is the International Day to End Violence Against Sex Workers). Adult content was defined as being "primarily photos, videos, or GIFs that show real-life human genitals or female-presenting nipples, and any content—including photos, videos, GIFs and illustrations—that depicts sex acts," according to the Tumblr administration. The decision was made, the website claims, in an effort to combat the posting of child pornography, which the site's algorithm had been unsuccessful in flagging. It has, however, left sex workers scrambling for alternatives.

Tumblr is not the first site to remove its adult content in the name of fighting child exploitation. Since Congress passed FOSTA/SESTA this past spring (the Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act and the Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act), a bill that aimed to fight human trafficking, sex work became further criminalized by targeting web hosting sites. The now infamous Backpage was shut down in Spring of 2018, but gained notoriety for its role in facilitating child sex trafficking. Since its seizure by the United States Government, Craigslist and Reddit have also closed down their personal/dating sections, which formerly housed coded offers from both unwilling victims of trafficking and free working sex workers.

Since the closure of these forums, however, one need only make a quick Google search of 'Backpage alternatives' to find nearly identical websites, which unabashedly offer escort services, and are also subject to much laxer regulations, if any. Facebook, as well, has recently updated their terms of use, in an aggressive effort to curb solicitation. The new policy bans 'implicit sexual solicitation,' even vaguely suggestive statements, or discussion of sexual partner preference. The last restriction has been of huge concern to the LGBTQ community, as with Tumblr, Facebook provides safe communities for sexual minorities. 

While without a doubt a worthy cause, the new ban robs sex workers of one of the truly safe platforms open to them to show their work, build communities, share advice, and, in some cases, screen their clients (clients who, as demonstrated by the #ThotAudit, can frequently be dangerous). In an interview with Vice, an organizer with Survivors Against SESTA expressed the severity of losing online platforms. “I know so many people who were able to start working indoors or leave their exploitative situations because of Backpage and Craigslist. They were able to screen for clients and keep themselves safe and save up money to leave the people exploiting them. And now that those sites are down, people are going back to pimps. Pimps are texting providers every day saying ‘the game’s changed. You need me.’” 

While Tumblr was untouched, at least directly, by FOSTA/SESTA, its decision to remove adult content is a deeply harmful one to the sex worker community, and only furthers the 'othering' of sex work.