2H 2020 Quick Links, Part 4 (FOSTA)

January 2, 2021 · by Eric Goldman · in Content Regulation

* “Department of Justice shut down CityXGuide.com and arrested the site’s owner, for the first time utilizing the criminal expansions created under FOSTA/SESTA.” Notice of proceedings. Indictment.

* Emily Morgan, On FOSTA and the Failures of Punitive Speech Restrictions, 115 Northwestern University Law Review 503 (2020):

FOSTA fails to achieve its primary goals because it enacts content-restrictive provisions, the burden of which falls largely on already vulnerable groups. In this case, those vulnerable groups include sex trafficking survivors and consensual sex workers—a group consisting mostly of women, low-income individuals, people of color, and members of the LGBTQ community

* Nick Cowen and Rachela Colosi, Sex work and online platforms: what should regulation do?, Journal of Entrepreneurship and Public Policy (October 23, 2020):

attempts to regulate online platforms to exclude the facilitation of sex work appear to have had negative consequences at least according to research conducted within the sex work community. A survey of sex workers in Rhode Island revealed that the loss of online opportunities for advertising had to led to the re-adoption of more dangerous working practices. A survey of street-based sex workers based in Massachusetts reported increases in income instability and a reduction in personal agency as a result of the passing of FOSTA-SESTA. In addition to loss of advertising, sex workers fear that the platforms they used for reporting violent clients come under the broad prohibition that FOSTA-SESTA uses. Sex workers in New York have reported being more likely to be targeted by police for ‘loitering’ because of their greater reliance on street advertisement following the reduction of online advertising opportunity.

A broader survey found that a majority of sex workers had recently been subject to threats of violence, exploitation or coercive attempts to obtain free services, some from people attempting to establish themselves as pimps, which some respondents associated directly with the passing of FOSTA-SESTA. This aligns with personal accounts of 13 sex workers being compelled to return to using pimps that they had previously found to be unnecessary for conducting their business when it became internet-based. This is suggestive that FOSTA-SESTA has undermined some of the crowding-out of coercive practices in the sector that platform had facilitated. For some sex workers, the next best option to relying on platforms is not exiting the sex industry, but continuing in the sector while engaging in risky practices that attract the attention of coercive actors. These are ‘inelastic’ sex workers who have relatively unattractive outside options. Although direct evidence is not yet available, presumably some ‘elastic’ sex workers were encouraged to exit the sector for less lucrative, but safer, alternatives.

* Huffington Post: ‘It’s Out Of Control’: How QAnon Undermines Legitimate Anti-Trafficking Efforts

* “Child Sex Trafficking Prosecutions Fall During Trump Administration.” Is this because FOSTA reduced child sex trafficking? More likely, it’s because law enforcement has invested less in child sex trafficking enforcement post-FOSTA for well-documented reasons.

* Kendra Albert et al, FOSTA in Legal Context (2020). An indispensable guide to navigating the law. It does all of the tedious statutory analysis that you don’t want to do.

More SESTA/FOSTA-Related Posts:

2H 2020 Quick Links, Part 4 (FOSTA)

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