Once upon a time, Twitter was paradise for sex workers. We could post our thirst traps, network and build community with each other, find clients, and build a following. Then came the hateful algorithms with their dreaded shadowbans. Building a following became virtually impossible, and our posts were hidden from our actual followers who WANT TO SEE THEM BC THEY FOLLOW US! We tried to warn the masses that these tools would be weaponized against political dissenters, but predictably we were mostly ignored. (We’re trying to warn y’all about banking discrimination and the dangers of facial recognition technology too but that’s a subject for another post. Just know that they always test their hateful tech tools on us first, then roll them out for the respectables and normals.)
If you are interested in learning more about this, check out Hacking Hustling’s piece
Anyway, when Melon Husk bought Twitter, we knew it didn’t bode well, but some remained hopeful due to all his yapping about “free speech.” Of course things only got worse for us under Apartheid Clyde, but most of us have stayed because it remains one of the only platforms where you can post tit without catching a permaban for it.
I guess the Neo-Nazification of the platform culminating in the re-election of Trump with Elon’s help has finally pushed us over the edge, because there has been a huge migration over to BlueSky (aka LibSky.) Will it be better? Probably not. But for now, the shadowbans are minimal and fascists don’t appear to be tolerated so here we are.
Y’all may or may not realize it but sex workers tend to be at the forefront of new tech trends and innovations. When a new platform pops up, we’ll be there shortly with innovative new ways to sell hole. So I predict that LibSky may just take off.
TL;DR: if you post tit, they will come
do banks have a material incentive to crack down on SW?
As far as I know, not really. This is one piece of the puzzle I don’t understand: why do they care so much?
My best guess is that it’s due to the higher frequency of chargebacks on adult transactions, but they already mitigate this with high processing fees so I just don’t get it.
Maybe it's labor discipline? SW might put upward pressure on wages as employers compete with a form of lucrative self-employment available to millions of workers?
They're under a greatd deal of pressure from varying cults - catholics, mormons, christian fascists, that demand they starve sex workers for ideological reasons. And if you step back a bit that feeds in to the way occult organizations use control of legitimate sex as a whip to control people, which is a core tactic of patriarchy, which is an essential component of class oppression.
So it's a bit convoluted but yes.