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Editor\u2019s note: Names were changed in this story to protect the identity of sources.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n Bay Area sex workers and advocacy groups gathered at Oakland City Hall on Sept. 13 to peacefully protest EARN IT (Eliminating Abusive and Rampant Neglect of Interactive Technologies Act of 2020), a national bill that will expand liability for digital platforms being used to solicit sex. Protestors, which included members of Bay Area Workers Support, Fight for the Future, Hacking\/Hustling, also called out Democratic vice-presidential candidate Kamala Harris and the other politicians who voted to pass the bill.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Critics claim EARN IT\u2014which covers prevention, identification, reporting, age rating and practices between websites and third parties, including sex on the internet\u2014actually makes sex work more dangerous.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n Currently, internet companies and platforms are protected from liability for what users post. If the EARN IT Act passes, websites that allow users to solicit sex will have to assess their liability of holding content related to the sex industry, which will make it harder for sex workers to use these third-party websites to get work. The ability to solicite sex remotely is an invaluable tool for sex workers to screen potentially risky clients remotely from the comfort of the home.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWithout online platforms, you\u2019re basically putting people on the streets and it\u2019s making it harder for anybody to have more resources,\u201d Said Nala, a sex worker who participated in the protest. \u201cOnline platforms show each other how to advertise safely and how to find trafficking victims, as well as how to help people that might be in a dangerous situation.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n EARN IT was pushed under the guise of combating child trafficking, expanding on the SESTA\/FOSTA Act of 2018, which amended the Communications Act of 1934 to make it harder for sex workers to find work on online platforms. SESTA\/FOSTA, a bill which Harris also enthusiastically supported, removed entire platforms used by sex workers to find work such as Backpage Ad.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Billed as a way to help victims of child trafficking, SESTA\/FOSTA had a huge impact on sex workers when it passed and it\u2019s far from being forgotten in the sex work community.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe EARN IT Act is a demonstration that some Congress members either didn\u2019t pay attention to the outcome of SESTA\/FOSTA, or they didn\u2019t care who the bill hurt.\u201d said Kate D\u2019Adamo, a long-time sex work rights activist and a partner from Reframe Health and Justice. \u201cEARN IT uses the same failed tactics as SESTA and it will only deepen and expand the same results.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n What bothers D\u2019Adamo about EARN IT is not only the way it uses the same failed approach of vastly expanding liability for platforms, but the impact it will have on marginalized communities and not those perpetrating harm. According to D\u2019Adamo, EARN IT replicates SESTA\/FOSTA\u2019s approach of completely ignoring the preventative angle of fighting child abuse and sex trafficking, in favor of focussing on strict punitive measures for websites. As with SESTA\/FOSTA, EARN IT fails to differentiate between sex trafficking and consensual sex work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n D\u2019Adamo believes that investment in preventing child abuse would be a better way to deal with child trafficking. Instead, just like SESTA\/FOSTA, \u201ccongress has thrown in the towel on prevention when the answers are sitting in front of us,\u201d said D\u2019Adamo. \u201cPrevention of child abuse isn\u2019t a mystery, it\u2019s a disturbingly underfunded project. I find that horrifying. And just like SESTA, EARN IT is going to do more harm than good.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Of even broader concern is the bill\u2019s approach of going after platforms that host content, because it supplies the government with new tools it could use to censor content or invade people\u2019s privacy. \u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI think that sex workers are the canary in the coal mine when it comes to internet privacy and security,\u201d said Stevie, a sex worker who was also at the Oakland City Hall demonstration. \u201cEARN IT Act is basically going to take the internet as we know it and fundamentally change it. Now internet companies like Instagram, Twitter and Facebook are going to be liable for what you post.\u00a0 So what\u2019s gonna happen is that the internet companies are going to start cracking down on content and that affects everybody. It\u2019s going to go deeper than just sex workers.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n Nala and Stevie are also concerned about the way that EARN IT attacks encryption, which is vital for maintaining user privacy online.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In an article published just before the passage of EARN IT, Joe Mullin, a policy analyst with Electronic Frontier Foundation, a Bay Area nonprofit dedicated to \u201cdefending civil liberties in the digital world,\u201d wrote that the act was originally written to target websites that use \u201cend-to-end\u201d encryption, which has long been a target of law enforcement. Attorney General William Barr has already stated publicly that \u201cEncryption is a security risk.\u201d Although EARN IT was amended to discourage the targeting of sites just for using end-to-end encryption, Mullin argues that the language used still leaves an open door for this to be \u201clitigated over and over, in courts across the country.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe internet is a space of free speech and freedom of information. With the Earn It Act, that\u2019s gonna completely go away,\u201d said Stevie.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Stevie wanted to make it clear that the issue presented by EARN IT is that it threatens privacy, it won\u2019t protect victims of sex trafficking and in fact will only make the lives of sex workers that much harder.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI started doing sex work when I was 18 years old by choice and also sex workers that do sex work because of need or poverty are completely valid, we\u2019re not separate,\u201d Stevie said. \u201cBut I think there\u2019s this idea that everyone that does sex work is being abused. We\u2019re not trafficked. I\u2019m a consenting adult doing sex work for almost eight years. I\u2019m a consenting adult. I choose to do this.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Editor\u2019s note: Names were changed in this story to protect the identity of sources. Bay Area sex workers and advocacy groups gathered at Oakland City Hall on Sept. 13 to peacefully protest EARN IT (Eliminating Abusive and Rampant Neglect of Interactive Technologies Act of 2020), a national bill that will expand liability for digital platforms […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":35,"featured_media":45676,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"gallery","meta":{"newspack_popups_has_disabled_popups":false,"newspack_featured_image_position":"","newspack_post_subtitle":"","newspack_article_summary_title":"Overview:","newspack_article_summary":"","newspack_hide_updated_date":false,"newspack_show_updated_date":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[18605],"coauthors":[18445],"class_list":["post-45674","post","type-post","status-publish","format-gallery","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-election-2020","post_format-post-format-gallery","entry"],"yoast_head":"\n