Thread by @KateDAdamo

When we said that the #EARNITAct is being pushed hard right now? @senrobportman just signed on as a co-sponsor, noting the WILD success of #SESTA #FOSTA - lets look at that incredible success, shall we?

https://twitter.com/senrobportman/status/1303825555683500033

First, if you want to read about tech/trafficking from a human rights perspective, can't recommend the Anti-#Trafficking Review more. Their last issue was entirely on tech, including #SESTA, but also other areas of labor/migration/surveillance antitraffickingreview.org/index.php/atrj…

Maybe the Senators backing these bills could send an intern to ya know... read up on this stuff before passed bad legislation... but I digress. So the success of #SESTA, shall we?

In 2018, Congress passed FOSTA/SESTA, expanding civil & criminal liability for platforms hosting info that could facilitate prostitution/trafficking. How did they define facilitating? How much do you have to know? Generally or a specific situation? They didn't bother w details...

A week before the bill was signed, the DOJ also took down Backpage and charged them with promotion of prostitution and money laundering. Remember how all the articles were about trafficking? Well none of the charges were.

And what were these incredible impacts being cited? Well - the organizations who were doing street-based outreach reported increases in 3-4x as many people doing street based work (which is not inherently any worse/more violent, but vulnerability are exacerbated)

So not only does this mean that people who were doing work online/or in a hybrid are moving back to more vulnerable work, it means those already doing public work saw increased competition - lowered prices, needing to offer more services, fewer clients to choose from

And for those who continued to work online, losing places to advertise also faced incredible economic precarity. If you look at the results from online surveys done by @hackinghustling - the results are overwhelming - #sexworkers were made more vulnerable.

Economic precarity has secondary impacts- fewer spots to advertise/more competition= fewer clients to choose from & lower prices= you can't refuse clients bc you need every session to make the same amt of $. Every session has risk. More sessions/less negotiating power= More risk.

This lead to a lot of things - especially violence. In @hackinghustling 's Erased 33% had reported increases in client violence, and below are reports collected completely separately from service providers of increases from both clients and third parties.

There are also mental health impacts of destabilizing a community who is more likely to be facing barriers from other forms of employment. The idea of going to and even more precarious form of work? It fucks with you.

And not that @senrobportman probably gives a shit about #LGBTQ folks, but the impacts were particularly harsh for the trans community, who got workplace non discrimination protections 2 months ago. But after FOSTA/SESTA passed? Calls to a suicide hotline went through the roof.

And lets talk about other metrics - how about the thing that people like @senrobportman point to as success in anti-trafficking efforts? Prosecutions. I might disagree, but if that's what you use... you're losing that argument, too. law360.com/articles/12802…

From the article: "Although [#FOSTA/#SESTA] were designed to make it more difficult for sex traffickers to operate on the internet, she said that it's also possible it has made it more difficult for law enforcement to identify victims and pursue investigations"

And the #SESTA promoted that it created the ability for victims to sue, and that Sec 230 was the big reason why they weren't! So this is about victims going after abusers! But in two years NO civil cases have been filed.

Lets be real - if this was about victim support it would have put anything towards services. If this was about civil suits @senrobportman could have increased funding for civil remedies for victims of trafficking, instead of saying nothing when that budget line almost disappeared

So in the two years since SESTA:
Sex Workers: More vulnerable to exploitation, violence
Prosecutions: Down
Investigations of online cases: Down
Civil Suits against Websites that aren't backpage using SESTA: None
Civil Suits against BP: Stalled b/c of the criminal case

So, @senrobportman If you could point to *LITERALLY ANYTHING* that you consider a success of #SESTA/#FOSTA outside of "I get to tweet about it now" we are all ears and would be thrilled to understand what you're referring to when you're celebrating wins.