Due to the
passage of the FOSTA/SESTA bills, anumber of US sex worker related forums have been shut down / restricted recently:
Closed* Craigslist Personals
* Nightshift.co
* Cityvibe.com
* Pounced (furry personals)
* Reddit subreddits:
/r/Escorts
/r/Hookers
/r/SugarDaddy
/r/MaleEscorts
/r/sugarbabies
/r/fbsm
/r/hepays
/r/sexworkerblogs
Restricted* The Erotic Review, VeryfyHim, Hung Angels, YourDominatrix, and Yellow Pages shut down their discussion boards, advertising boards, and community forums
* Google is deleting porn stored on Google drive, restricting erotic ads
* Skype - banned "offensive" language
* Backpage - still up, but ads are severely limited
IMHO, the FOST/SESTA regulations will be struck down as unconstitutional. In the meantime though, we should expect that online services will continue to restrict what sex workers can say and do online.
Therefore, now is a good time for sex workers to look for other forums that are more censorship resistant.
From my perspective, a good discussion forum will have the following options:
* cross-platform (Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, Android, IOS)
* decentralized / P2P
* Tor Hidden Service
* anonymous / pseudonymous
* good moderation tools
* self-hosted
* open source
* easy to use UI
* self-sustaining business model
* no spyware
* allows ads
* open to sex workers and clients
* neutral / no conflicts of interest
* good privacy / Access Control Lists [ACL]
* no character limits
* hosted outside the US in a sex worker friendly country (New Zealand, Germany, Netherlands)
* portable data (no lock-in)
Here are some forums that are currently available:
* SafeOffice (sex workers only):
https://www.safeoffice.com* Switter.at -
https://www.switter.at Mastodon instance for sex workers. Hosted in Austria
* Discord (sex workers only):
https://discord.gg/adyPe4y* Telegram:
https://t.me/joinchat/FMw3QxB-bdEM4gi6fw3A6w* TER boards:
https://www.theeroticreview.com* Stripperweb:
https://www.stripperweb.com* Eroticmonkey:
https://www.eroticmonkey.com/* Eros.com:
https://www.eros.com/* P411:
https://preferred411.com/* Eccie:
https://eccie.net/* Slixa:
https://www.slixa.com/* TNA:
https://www.tnaboard.com/These are brand new, but show promise:
* Hubzilla:
https://gerzilla.de/channel/sexworkers* Dread (Tor-only)
http://dreadecomdopooda.onion/d/sexworkers* Minds.com Sex Workers Forum -
https://www.minds.com/groups/profile/825386597235675136* Riot.im:
https://riot.im/app/#/room/#sw:matrix.orgMaggie McNeil also
drew up huge list of regional boards.
Of the forums listed above, the SafeOffice/Discord forums are probably the most popular sex-worker only forums. The Switter.at is probably the most popular of the forums that allow both clients and sex workers.
However, IMHO, hubzilla offers the most long-term promise. Hubzilla has a powerful access control system, allowing very fine grained control over the privacy of every part of the system. In addition, Hubzilla also has strong support for "nomadic identity". You can easily move your account from one hub to another. So, if your hub's host is shutdown, you can easily switch to your clone accounts on any other hub, with no loss of contacts, friends, or content.
