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Last year, Trump had signed a set of controversial bills intended to make it easier to cut down on illegal sex trafficking online
named SESTA/FOSTA. Now, sex workers say that they have broadly been forced offline, making their work far less safe.
"In the days immediately after the bill passed in Congress, platforms started scrambling to proactively shut down forums or
whole sites where sex trafficking could feasibly happen.
One of the websites key to the FOSTA debate was
Backpage, a site where users posted advertisements, frequently for sexual services.
Lola, a community organizer, told me in a Signal message that this is literally a life-or-death law for sex workers.
“I know so many people who were able to start working indoors or leave their exploitative situations because of Backpage
and Craigslist,” she said. “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.’”
In the lead-up to the passage of Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act / Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act last year, advocacy groups and
sex workers rallied over how the bills could make them less safe by forcing sex workers off the internet where they build
communities, screen potential clients for threats, and negotiate the terms of their work with others."