If you’re a sex worker looking to stay in the business, you’re likely in the midst of a serious rebrand.
That’s because new laws called FOSTA/SESTA passed in the US in the spring. Framed by politicians as a move to prevent trafficking online, the laws make it illegal for workers to advertise their services on third party platforms. Similar laws are in place in Canada, and have been for nearly four years. As a result, traditional methods of advertising services and vetting clients, like Backpage and Craigslist personals, are shutting down. Workers are, once again, left to reinvent the internet in order to ensure their personal safety.
Some are creating new personas for themselves to avoid detection. Some are selling their time in the form of photo shoots or other services. And another potential answer, of course, is apps.
A few have been invented already. There’s Australian-founded Rendevu, which brands itself as “Uber for sex workers.” There’s Quebec-made Gfendr, and there’s the Heaux app, made by a former escort who now mentors sex workers in LA. The designs are all similar: you sign up with your name, email, and phone number, and you can be matched with a provider or a client and take any plans for an appointment from there.
While the idea is simple and makes sense, some sex workers have concerns about the safety of apps like these. Toronto-based Brazen Lee is transitioning out of sex work, in part because of how difficult the work became in the wake of the Protection of Communities and Exploited Persons Act being passed. She says there’s nothing to stop a sexual predator—or a cop—from signing up and hurting or arresting a worker.
“It doesn’t seem safer to me at all,” she said over the phone. She tried to sign up for Gfendr but experienced technical difficulties, as it’s still in beta. She said she would sign up to use an app that does work, but she wouldn’t count on its creators to watch her back, especially in a situation involving a subpoena.
She says key indicators of safety an app should take into account include making sure clients are required to provide a verified phone number upon signing up, including a review section, and showing clients’ approximate location (though that might deter some clients, she says). Phone number verification and “bad date lists” are classic elements of sex worker safety screening, and apps that use these functions allow for some of that to be kept intact. She says she wouldn’t advise trusting an app that doesn’t take these into account.
“Screening is a weird thing,” she says. “For me, it’s mostly instinct. People get your info, so it’s out there, but I will always direct people to my website. If people don’t follow [the steps I listed there], that’s a red flag. I won’t deal with anyone who doesn’t obey those rules.”
The crucial elements, Lee adds, beyond the safety factors she listed are to make apps non-threatening for clients, but also make to make them easy, free, and sex worker-informed.
All of that said, workers shouldn’t have to jump through this many smoke rings just to do a job. Without full decriminalization, which will allow sex workers to unionize and organize as they see fit, workers say they won’t be able to do their work as safely as they should be able to.