> The context
The digital sphere is home to sex workers. For those in camming, porn, and other digital service exchanges, it's where they make their livelihood. Since the pandemic, more and more sex workers have moved online to advertise their services, vet clients, and operate their businesses more safely.
However, censorship and discrimination are on the rise in the digital sphere, and sex workers are among the most affected. The current Big Tech model running the internet is hostile to sex workers, who are often faced with over-moderation, intense censorship, deplatforming, and marginalization. Payment discrimination is also a major factor, with some of the most widely used payment systems, like PayPal, showing consistent patterns of discrimination.
At the same time, sex workers remain unprotected and vulnerable online. They face significant risks of unlawful content scraping, sextortion, impersonation, non-consensual intimate image sharing, and technology-facilitated gender-based violence (TFGBV). Yet they are rarely taken into consideration when these issues are discussed, and they often fall outside existing redress mechanisms, unable to rely on law enforcement for protection.
Sex workers are also frequent victims of data scraping and brokerage that puts their privacy at risk. Numerous cases of border discrimination have been documented, based on data brokered from adult marketplace websites. As our identities and payments move increasingly online, the surveillance and discrimination faced by sex workers is a growing concern.
> Our objectives
Our objective is to make the online environment a safe space for sex workers, not only to advertise and vet clients, but also to build community, connect with peers, and express themselves safely. This means freedom from the fear that their own content will be used against them, and full agency over what, where, and with whom they choose to engage and share material. Decriminalization is the first step: freedom for sex workers online must include freedom for sex workers offline.
We believe a privacy-preserving digital landscape is a fundamental right. That's why we work alongside digital rights actors, forming coalitions with EDRi, CDT, Bits of Freedom, ReproUncensored, and many others, to bring the perspective of sex workers into the digital rights debate and help imagine and build a better digital future.
We push back on censorship, surveillance, and discrimination, and hold Big Tech accountable using the legal tools available to us, such as the DSA and the AI Act. We also foster an online environment rooted in peer support, which is why we invest in capacity-building for our members so they can stay vigilant against online dangers.
Finally, we aim to contribute to the eradication of child sexual abuse material (CSAM), non-consensual intimate imagery (NCII), and TFGBV, ensuring sex workers' perspectives are included in these discussions.
> Our current activities
In 2026, ESWA's Digital Rights Programme invested heavily in capacity-building, running two online workshops for members with outside experts. One on Age Verification, one on Data Retention, with two more planned on Payment Discrimination and Border Control. We're also organizing a major gathering for 25 sex workers and close allies, featuring 10 sessions on digital rights. The gathering will equip participants to better understand the perils of the online world for sex workers, while also bringing them together to imagine an internet built for them. We're excited to host sex workers in Barcelona and center their experiences in the online world.
We've also worked hard to build connections with digital rights actors, participating in events including Re:publica, CPDP, the EDRi General Assembly, and CDT's DSA Roundtable - including through panels and talks. We were represented in Aspiration Tech's Policy Leadership Cohort and have stayed in close contact with policymakers at the European Commission and in the European Parliament, consulting on topics like the AI Act Omnibus and the DSA's investigation into pornographic Very Large Online Platforms (VLOPs).
We're proud to be launching research on deepfakes and sex work, the result of six months of in-depth work that fills a much-needed gap in the academic literature on generative AI sexual content and sex workers' lived experience. We're also preparing a position paper on age verification, informed by a focus group with our members, to give policymakers useful insight into how this technology can impact sex workers.
We remain committed to staying grassroots, sharing knowledge and fostering collaboration with our members, while keeping a close eye on high-level developments in digital rights and regulation.
> Past activities
ESWA's Digital Rights Programme has been active since 2020. Recently, we published our research on Platform Accountability, now being translated into French, Spanish, and Russian. We also released two series of Tarot Cards informing the public about the issues sex workers face online. In 2025, we brought over 20 BIPOC sex workers to Barcelona for the second edition of our BIPOC Academy, this time focused on digital rights; covering topics like surveillance and discrimination, as well as how to stay vigilant and resourceful in the face of it.