'I've Never Been So Exploited': The consequences of FOSTA-SESTA in Aotearoa New Zealand

Abstract

Aotearoa New Zealand’s 2003 decriminalisation of sex work has reduced the exploitation of sex workers, as well as the health and safety risks in the industry. Nevertheless, United States-driven criminalising policies still influence sex workers abroad. The Fight Online Sex Trafficking and Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Acts (FOSTA-SESTA) effectively criminalised websites where sex workers advertise. Shortly before that, the FBI shut down the internationally used Backpage.com, leading many sex workers in both countries to return to the streets or brothels. These events contributed to the rising dominance of one advertising website, NewZealandGirls.com. Drawing on twenty semi-structured interviews and four observation cases with sex workers in Auckland, in this paper, I explore the international consequences of FOSTA-SESTA and the closure of Backpage on my participants. I show that this punitive approach to segments of the online sex industry has not only placed sex workers in greater financial insecurity, but has reduced their ability to control their working conditions. These outcomes, I conclude, have undermined the positive impacts of decriminalisation, while exacerbating socioeconomic, racial, gender, and legal inequalities in Auckland’s sex industry.

A Critical Analysis of the Enactment of the Allow States and Victims to Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act of 2018

“…Blue (2018) has called the removal of their content from the Internet a "kind of cultural genocide". FOSTA has also had an impact on sex workers from around the world, not just those who are located in the United States (Bogle, 2019;Musto et al, 2021;Tichenor, 2020).…”

“Disadvantaged in the American-dominated internet”: Sex, Work, and Technology

“…While sex workers have long been subjected to restrictive community standards from social media sites, this discrimination has gotten worse since the passing of FOSTA, an American law aimed at preventing sex trafficking by removing legal protections for Internet companies hosting content about commercial sex [55]. This law's conflation of sex trafficking with consensual sex work has led to over-enforcement in the United States for fear of legal repercussions, and has led to global consequences for sex workers [56].…”

Sex work and online platforms: what should regulation do?

“…The nature of plea bargaining in the United States criminal justice system means that it is difficult to infer with confidence the guilt of these parties (Barkow, 2019; Surprenant and Brennan, 2020). Moreover, the shutdown of Backpage was felt as a substantial cost for sex workers who lost an important forum where they were able to control the conduct of their business (Witt, 2018; Tichenor, 2020; Q, 2018). This raises a set of controversial questions.…”

“…When that option was removed, some sex workers were compelled back into working in brothels. Others attempted to use New Zealand-based online platforms as an alternative but these often had an inadequate number of clients to maintain a secure income (Tichenor, 2020). One alternative platform enforces a restrictive exclusivity requirement on sex workers while Backpage had not.…”