Sex Workers were early adopters of Web 2.0 technologies, such as online classified pages, social media groups and shared content creation files. These technologies were instrumental in improving sex worker safety and empowering workers to establish clear identities and boundaries, screen potential customers and create shared content to improve the safety of all users.
With the introduction of FOSTA-SESTA into law, many of these platforms closed entirely, removed sex-worker-related content or deleted sex-worker accounts, resulting in a dramatic loss of income and a reduction of safety for sex workers. Particularly affected were those sex workers pushed to less safe avenues of sex work for survival, predominately sex workers of colour, trans and non-binary sex workers and others who experience intersectional discrimination.