FOSTA-SESTA: The Law That Changed Sex Work Online

Sex Work: Law, Rights, and Policy

Estimated reading time: 18 minutes

Reader promise: This article explains what FOSTA-SESTA is, what it was intended to do, what the evidence shows it actually did to sex workers’ safety, how it affected the digital infrastructure that sex workers had used, what the response from advocacy and research communities has been, and why it matters for understanding sex work policy internationally.

Note: This article covers law and policy affecting the United States. It does not constitute legal advice. Practitioners in any jurisdiction should consult appropriately qualified legal professionals about their specific situation.

Two Laws, One Effect

On 11 April 2018, President Trump signed into law a package known as FOSTA-SESTA: the Allow States and Victims to Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act (FOSTA) and the Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act (SESTA). The package had passed the Senate 97-2. Its stated purpose was to combat online sex trafficking by removing the legal protections that had allowed online platforms to host advertisements for sexual services. Its actual effects, as documented by subsequent research, advocacy organisations, and ultimately members of Congress, were substantially different from its stated goals, and substantially harmful to the very populations it claimed to protect.

FOSTA-SESTA is, as of this writing, the most significant piece of legislation to affect online sex work in the United States, and through its impact on global digital platforms, it affected sex workers internationally. Understanding what it did and what the evidence shows about its consequences is essential for anyone seeking an informed understanding of sex work policy, digital rights, and the relationship between law and harm in this field.

What FOSTA-SESTA Actually Changed

Before FOSTA-SESTA, internet platforms in the United States were broadly protected by Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996, which provided that platforms could not be held liable for content posted by users. Section 230 had been the legal foundation enabling the open internet: without it, platforms would face impossible legal exposure for the content of their users and would respond by either shutting down or implementing extremely restrictive content filtering that would effectively make the open internet impossible.

FOSTA-SESTA amended Section 230 to remove liability protection for platforms that hosted content facilitating sex trafficking, including, in its broadly written language, content facilitating prostitution. The law did not define the boundary between sex trafficking and consensual adult sex work clearly, which created a chilling effect far broader than any targeted anti-trafficking measure would produce: platforms could not afford to test where the line lay, and the rational response was to remove any content that could plausibly fall within the law’s scope.

The immediate effects were dramatic. Craigslist removed its personal advertisements section. Backpage, the adult advertising platform that had become the dominant venue for indoor sex work advertising in the United States, was seized by federal authorities the week before the bill’s passage. Dozens of other platforms that had provided advertising, community, and safety networking services for sex workers shut down or removed relevant sections within weeks of the law’s passage. The digital infrastructure that many sex workers had built their safety practices around disappeared overnight.

What the Digital Infrastructure Had Provided

To understand the impact of FOSTA-SESTA on sex worker safety, it is essential to understand what the digital platforms it removed had actually provided. The significance is not primarily about advertising: it is about safety tools that sex workers had developed and relied upon to manage the specific risks of their work.

Client screening was the most fundamental safety function. Online advertising platforms allowed sex workers to require prospective clients to provide identifying information, references from other workers, or verification through screening services before agreeing to meet. This screening process substantially reduced the risk of encountering clients who were dangerous, who had harmed other workers previously, or who were police officers conducting sting operations. The ability to screen clients from a position of relative safety, before any in-person meeting, was identified by workers themselves as among the most important safety improvements that online advertising had produced.

Bad date lists and community safety networks were a second critical function. Online platforms provided the infrastructure for sex workers to share information about dangerous clients: lists of clients who had been violent, who had robbed workers, who had attempted coercion, or who police had identified as suspects in assaults against workers. These community safety networks, built on the digital infrastructure that FOSTA-SESTA removed, allowed workers to make informed decisions about who to see and who to avoid in ways that no other system could replicate.

Working independently, rather than through management structures, was a third function. Online advertising allowed many sex workers to access clients directly without relying on third-party managers, agencies, or other intermediaries whose involvement typically reduces workers’ safety, autonomy, and income while increasing their exposure to exploitation. When online advertising disappeared, more workers needed to use intermediaries, increasing dependency and reducing both safety and earnings.

The Research: What Actually Happened

The research on FOSTA-SESTA’s consequences, while still developing, consistently documents harms rather than the benefits the law’s proponents claimed. Research by economists at Baylor University (2019), examining the period before FOSTA-SESTA, found that the availability of Craigslist’s Erotic Services section was associated with a reduction in female homicide rates of between 10 and 17 per cent at the national level. The researchers attributed this effect to the safety improvements provided by online advertising: the ability to screen clients, to work indoors rather than on the street, and to maintain the communication and mobility that online access enabled. The implication is that removing these platforms would be expected to reverse these gains.

The Hacking//Hustling collective published the Erased report in 2020, based on participatory research with sex workers who worked online and with street-based workers with limited technology access. The study found that FOSTA-SESTA decreased sex workers’ financial security and stability, increased their exposure to violence, and removed the digital safety tools they had relied upon. Survey findings cited in subsequent advocacy reporting documented that close to 40 per cent of sex workers reported heightened physical and sexual assault following FOSTA-SESTA’s passage, including robberies, rapes, and other forms of violence.

Law enforcement has also reported negative consequences. Service providers and law enforcement agencies documented that FOSTA-SESTA impaired human trafficking investigations by removing the online advertising that had provided the most effective mechanism for identifying victims and perpetrators. Investigators reported abandoning pending investigations, difficulty locating missing youth, and reduced ability to conduct undercover operations targeting actual traffickers. The law that was supposed to combat trafficking thus appears, on the available evidence, to have impaired the most effective tools available for doing so.

The Congressional and Advocacy Response

The documented harms of FOSTA-SESTA prompted congressional efforts to study and potentially reverse its effects. Representatives Ro Khanna and Barbara Lee, alongside Senators Elizabeth Warren and Ron Wyden, introduced the SAFE Sex Workers Study Act (Stop Arresting and Funding Exploitation Sex Workers Study Act) on multiple occasions, calling for a federal study of FOSTA-SESTA’s actual effects on sex worker safety. The bill’s sponsors cited early evidence of harm and the absence of any rigorous federal assessment of whether the law was achieving its stated goals.

The United Nations Working Group on Discrimination Against Women and Girls, in its 2023 report, specifically addressed the conflation of sex trafficking and consensual adult sex work in legal frameworks, identifying this conflation as harmful to both populations. The Working Group’s position, consistent with the analysis of sex worker advocacy organisations, is that effective responses to trafficking require distinguishing it from consensual adult sex work rather than conflating the two, because the conflation undermines the cooperation and trust of workers who could otherwise provide information about genuine trafficking.

Sex worker advocacy organisations including the Sex Workers Outreach Project (SWOP), the St. James Infirmary, the Desiree Alliance, and many international counterparts have consistently opposed FOSTA-SESTA and documented its harms since passage. Their position is grounded not in opposition to anti-trafficking measures but in the evidence that FOSTA-SESTA, as written and implemented, harmed consensual sex workers while failing to achieve its stated goals against trafficking.

FOSTA-SESTA and the UK and International Context

FOSTA-SESTA is United States legislation, but its effects have been felt globally. US-based platforms operating internationally removed adult content and advertising to comply with the law, affecting sex workers in the UK, Europe, Australia, and beyond. The removal of Backpage and Craigslist personal advertisements, and the subsequent self-censorship of other platforms, removed tools that international sex workers had used regardless of their local legal context.

The broader debate about sex work law and policy in the United Kingdom and Europe has proceeded somewhat independently of FOSTA-SESTA but has been informed by it. The New Zealand decriminalisation model, the Nordic or Swedish model (criminalising the purchase but not the sale of sex), and various forms of partial legalisation all represent different policy approaches whose effects on safety, trafficking, and worker wellbeing are debated with increasing reference to the accumulating evidence base. FOSTA-SESTA provides one data point in that debate: a dramatic natural experiment demonstrating that criminalising the online infrastructure of sex work produces documented harms to workers without producing the safety improvements its proponents claimed.

Myths and Misconceptions

Myth: FOSTA-SESTA reduced sex trafficking.
Reality: The available evidence does not support this claim. Law enforcement agencies reported impaired trafficking investigations, and the conflation of trafficking with consensual sex work that the law embeds undermines the cooperation needed to identify actual trafficking victims and perpetrators.
Myth: FOSTA-SESTA only affected traffickers and exploitation.
Reality: The law’s broad language and platforms’ risk-averse responses removed safety tools used by consensual adult sex workers, producing documented increases in violence and decreases in financial security for this population.
Myth: Online advertising for sexual services was simply advertising illegal activity.
Reality: In many jurisdictions, including parts of the United States, adult sex work is legal under specific conditions. More broadly, the removal of online advertising infrastructure harms workers regardless of the legal status of their activity in their specific location.
Myth: FOSTA-SESTA is an American issue that does not affect UK sex workers.
Reality: The removal of US-based platforms and the chilling effect on other global platforms affected sex workers internationally, including in the United Kingdom, regardless of local legal frameworks.

Reader Reflection

FOSTA-SESTA passed 97-2 in the Senate. Understanding how legislation with such apparently overwhelming bipartisan support could produce the documented harms the evidence shows requires examining what was not said during its passage: about the distinction between trafficking and consensual sex work, about the role that online platforms had come to play in worker safety, about the evidence that policing sex work drives it underground rather than eliminating it, and about the populations most harmed by the law’s effects. The gap between the law’s stated purpose and its documented consequences is a case study in the consequences of legislating on moral rather than evidence-based grounds, in a domain where the most affected populations had the least political voice.

Practical Takeaways

FOSTA-SESTA (2018) amended Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act to remove liability protection for platforms hosting content facilitating sex trafficking, using language broad enough to encompass consensual adult sex work advertising.
The immediate effects removed the digital safety infrastructure that sex workers had built including client screening tools, community safety networks, and bad date lists.
Research documents negative safety outcomes for sex workers following FOSTA-SESTA including increased violence and loss of safety tools, while law enforcement agencies reported impaired trafficking investigations.
Congressional efforts to study and potentially revise the law’s effects have been introduced by legislators including Senator Warren and Representative Khanna.
The UN Working Group on Discrimination Against Women and Girls (2023) identified the conflation of trafficking and consensual sex work as harmful to both populations.
This article does not constitute legal advice. Sex workers and those working with them should consult appropriately qualified legal professionals about their specific situation and jurisdiction.

References

Abel, G., Fitzgerald, L., Healy, C., and Taylor, A. (Eds.). (2010). Taking the Crime Out of Sex Work: New Zealand Sex Workers’ Fight for Decriminalisation. Policy Press.
Hacking//Hustling. (2020). Erased: The Impact of FOSTA-SESTA and the Removal of Backpage. Hacking//Hustling. Available at: hackinghustling.org
Harcourt, C. and Donovan, B. (2005). The many faces of sex work. Sexually Transmitted Infections, 81(3), 201-206. https://doi.org/10.1136/sti.2004.012468
Sanders, T., O’Neill, M., and Pitcher, J. (2009). Prostitution: Sex Work, Policy and Politics. SAGE Publications.
United Nations Working Group on Discrimination Against Women and Girls. (2023). Eliminating discrimination against sex workers and securing their human rights. United Nations Human Rights Council.