Policy and Platforms: Sex Workers' Labor Experiences Under Changing Online Regulation

In an increasingly digital world, online platforms play an important role in setting laborers' working conditions. Yet, as new internet regulation is proposed, the interplay between policy, platforms, and working conditions remains unclear. An example of this is FOSTA‐SESTA—a 2018 federal law aimed at ending sex trafficking—that disrupted the sex worker industry by altering regulation on platforms. I perform a qualitative analysis of interviews from a recent sex‐worker‐led podcast (N = 23) to investigate how they describe the impact of FOSTA‐SESTA on their working conditions. I support the primary investigation with an archival analysis of public documents from platforms showing their responsiveness to the legislative change. The findings from this study reveal workers are exposed to greater financial precarity after FOSTA‐SESTA stemming from increased policing by platforms and payment processors, ultimately threatening workers' safety. Using a theoretical framework on sex work laws in norm setting which has been applied in geographically bounded contexts, I also consider how FOSTA‐SESTA shapes cultural norms that conflate all sex work as trafficking. Specifically, I show the breadth of the internet has allowed the sex‐abolitionist criminal positioning of the US to permeate broadly, affecting banks that work with online platforms and shaping platforms attitudes and punitive responses to sex workers globally. Finally, I provide methodological contributions for future research utilizing podcasts as data in balancing the ethical tradeoffs and benefits for studying hard‐to reach populations.