Digital Sex Work: Sexual Entrepreneurship in the Shadow of Criminalisation

• In Event: Digital Criminology: Criminalization and Crises

Abstract

With every transportation and communication technological advancement - from the print media to the car, to the phone and now to the Internet – sex work/ers have reinvented, adjusted, and importantly innovated, to advance and meet the technological changes of society. With the advance of the Internet and digital platforms sex workers have developed new ways to advertise and new modalities of sex work. Earlier literature on digital sex work reported many of the benefits of digital sex work – flexibility, increased safety and opportunities to make an income (Sanders et al, 2016; Rand, 2019), However, more recently sex workers have noted that at the same time working through online platforms can create digital harms (ESWA, 2023). This paper identifies digital harms as outlined by sex workers - deplatforming, financial discrimination and non-consensual sharing of images and asks if the UK’s recent Online Safety Act 2024 goes anyway to address these digital harms, or does it further criminalise sex work.

Author

• Helen Rand, University of Greenwich