Social Media Censorship Is Costing Sex Workers and Adult Influencers Big Money

Are sex workers being unfairly targeted by tech companies? Here’s how social media censorship affects adult industry influencers.

According to a Centro University study, social media censorship is costing sex workers hundreds of millions of dollars a year. A survey sent out to adult industry influencers back in February revealed startling results, with nearly half of respondents reporting that one of their social media accounts (on Twitter or Instagram) had been banned in the past year. Nearly 1 in 10 reported that both of their accounts had been banned.

Some adult industry influencers also reported that their accounts had been shadowbanned, meaning their traffic and engagement fundamentally came to a halt.

Though most of these influencers play by the Terms of Service, avoiding explicit content, monitoring what sorts of things they link and advertise, and keeping an eye on their followers and hashtags, they find themselves with banned accounts nonetheless. They often don’t know just where and how they violated the Terms, and they often have no chance to appeal.

This comes at a detriment to their very livelihoods.

FanCentro VP Kat Revenga says, “Social media censorship isn’t some theoretical issue for adult influencers, it robs them of huge amounts of income. The majority of adult influencers are small business owners who use the income to pay rent and put food on the table, and the arbitrary closure of an account can be devastating, depriving them of tens of thousands of dollars.”

CentroU wanted to see exactly how much an adult industry influencer could be affected by unfair social media bans, and created a profile of a “typical adult influencer.” They reported that someone earning $4,000 per month in January could easily drop to under $1,000 per month in July. “By the end of the first year,” they reported, “an influencer suffers over $30,000 in lost income.”

Revenga went on to say, “Social media has enabled a new generation of independent adult influencers to thrive, and to own what they produce, but the true power rests with the social media companies. Their arbitrary and discriminatory enforcement is costing an already marginalized population hundreds of millions of dollars a year.”

CentroU is a free school for adult influencers and sex workers.

Have you experienced social media censorship in your line of work? What are your thoughts on how the content of adult industry influencers is treated by social media platforms?

Photo at top by Seyi Ariyo on Unsplash