00:00:00
Speaker 1: Many of you regular listeners know I've been arguing that it's time to make changes to a law called Section 230. For the new initiates among you, Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996 is the law that protects websites, apps, social media platforms from lawsuits over posts made by their users. It has shaped almost everything we experience on the internet, for better and for worse. Today on the show, a cautionary tale about what can go wrong when you tinker with this law. I think it's time to update Section 230 for the powerful, algorithmic, and AI-driven internet of today to strip back the immunity that the law currently gives to tech companies who can more or less do what they want right now without the threat of being sued. Now, there is one time when Congress did this. In 2018, lawmakers rolled back a teeny bit of Section 230 They did this with seemingly good intentions. They were trying to stop websites from being used for terrible crimes. But that ended up causing things to go bad in a different way. It hurt a group of people who are already in a risky line of work. People in the sex industry. This whole situation, it definitely gives me pause. I'll say up front that it hasn't thrown me off my mission. I still believe there's a way to reform Section 230 that can do more good than harm. But the story of what happened when Congress did change the law slightly, you can't ignore it. And in fact, there's plenty to learn from it, about how trying to plug one leak on the internet can spring another. So today, we're going to hear from someone who lived through those consequences, a guy who was making a living on OnlyFans, whose life got harder and more dangerous when Congress changed Section 230. At that moment when, like, the money plummeted, how did it affect your life?
00:01:53
Speaker 2: Well, like, I guess urgency. It's like, what am I going to do? I had to make hard decisions.
00:01:59
Speaker 1: From KCRW and Placement Theory, I'm Brian Reed. This is Question Everything. Stick around. This change in 2018 to Section 230. It just so happens my producer, Sam Egan, is close with somebody whose life was turned upside down by it.
00:02:18
Speaker 2: I'm Davin Addison. My stage name is Davin Strong.
00:02:22
Speaker 1: Devin does porn, among other things, in adult entertainment, hence the stage name. He's 30, an old wrestling teammate of my producer Sam's from college in Wyoming, which is where Devin's from. The three of us got on a call one Friday night recently.
00:02:36
Speaker 2: You're in Vegas now? What's that like? Oh, man. Vegas is cool. It's more low-key than people like to imagine it is. It's not anything crazy.
00:02:46
Speaker 3: Although, last time I went, we ate $ 200 worth of sushi between each, each probably.
00:02:50
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah.
00:02:52
Speaker 1: Part of why I was eager to talk to Davin, he's just a regular guy whose life and livelihood got upended by a policy change in D.C. that he didn't even know about. Well, I guess a regular guy who's six feet tall and 280 pounds with thighs the diameter of telephone poles. Davin's ripped, covered head to foot in tattoos. Not intimidating, though. In fact, he's kind of a softie. Davin first tried sex work when he was a junior in college. He was going through some pretty serious mental health challenges and had quit the wrestling team, which had been a huge part of his life. He's broke, was never great at class, but where he excels is fitness. He loves working out.
00:03:33
Speaker 2: I never really knew how I was going to move through the world in any way that wasn't like something physically. And I'm like, so how can I still find a way to like make money and move through the world and do so in a way where I can like still do things I enjoy, which is like be in shape, you know? So I was like, I'm going to go be like a fitness model.
00:03:57
Speaker 1: Devin shoots off some bodybuilding photos to a few magazines and they get back to him. He starts doing some fitness shoots, gets hooked up with a modeling agent.
00:04:05
Speaker 2: He was like, yeah, you have to be around this campsite, a.
00:04:08
Speaker 1: Cam site, not a campsite. Like where people pay to watch models live online, flexing, doing other stuff.
00:04:17
Speaker 2: So I'm like, okay. Um, This seems better than making minimum wage.
00:04:23
Speaker 1: And you were still in college at this point?
00:04:25
Speaker 2: I was in college, yep.
00:04:27
Speaker 1: Living with our producer, Sam, and another guy.
00:04:29
Speaker 3: I remember really vividly you kind of half-joking about it for a couple of weeks. For context, we lived in this awful, disgusting apartment on South 11th.
00:04:37
Speaker 2: Street in Laramie, Wyoming, on the literal edge of town. Nothing there. It's like town, nothing. And he quit the team, and.
00:04:46
Speaker 2: For a couple of weeks, he'd been like, ah, I don't know what I'm going to do.
00:04:48
Speaker 3: I think I, maybe I'll just like jerk off on camera or something like that.
00:04:50
Speaker 2: It's like, what was I saying? That's funny. No, that's real.
00:04:56
Speaker 3: I remember when you finally were like, we were in the middle of the living room.
00:04:59
Speaker 2: We're all playing battlefield.
00:05:01
Speaker 3: And damage just stands up and like stands in the middle of the hallway.
00:05:04
Speaker 2: And there's a short hallway. And then it goes left to his room and right to my room. He's quiet for a minute.
00:05:09
Speaker 3: And then he just kind of looks at us and we all stop. Cause he's like, stood up like he's going to make an announcement. And he's like, all right, I'm going to do it. I'm going to go jerk off on camera now.
00:05:17
Speaker 2: I'm doing it.
00:05:19
Speaker 3: And then you went in your room.
00:05:22
Speaker 2: And that was it.
00:05:23
Speaker 1: Wow. That was your first day at work.
00:05:26
Speaker 2: I guess so. Yeah, I guess so.
00:05:30
Speaker 1: He goes back for a second day at work, a third. People online seem to like Davin. He starts getting fans, particularly men. You're straight, gay.
00:05:41
Speaker 2: Like, how do you identify?
00:05:42
Speaker 1: Okay.
00:05:42
Speaker 2: For a long time, I identified as bi, and now I'll joke and be like, I'm like spicy straight, or I'll be like, you know, I'm just like, I'm just queer, like, you know, whatever. Just like, you know, generally prefer, have a preference, like a heavy preference for women. Can't enjoy men in certain contexts, and was very open-minded.
00:06:01
Speaker 1: Devin had a tough upbringing, a lot in the shadow of his dad, a big, intense guy who was also abusive. Devin always felt forced into a lot of limiting stereotypes. about what it means to be a man, how important it was to prove that you were tough. His dad was a Marine. Davin grew up wrestling. But the world of wrestling, the whole macho scene he was in out West, it started to bother him.
00:06:25
Speaker 2: These systems that alienate men and teach men to be, you know, push their feelings down and teach men that this is the only way to be a man. I was just like, yeah, tired of getting beat up, you know, wrestling culture, just like cowboy.
00:06:38
Speaker 1: Culture, Davin is in the middle of figuring out how to make enough money to support himself in college when something terrible happens. His dad, who had been facing charges of sex crimes, is killed by police after he points a rifle at them. Davin believes it was suicide by cop. It's all over the news.
00:06:57
Speaker 2: All that very much traumatized me.
00:07:00
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, man.
00:07:01
Speaker 2: Oh, you know, many moons. But I was able to quickly pinpoint, like, well, why is my dad dead? Like, why do I feel so lonely?
00:07:10
Speaker 1: Devin drops out of college. His mom has her own struggles and isn't a big part of his life. He's poor with nowhere to go home to. He's trying to land on what quote unquote normal career might be available to a guy like him. But none of the paths feel right.
00:07:24
Speaker 2: I was like seeing people like, you know, join the military or go be cops. And I was like, oh, I don't really fuck with that. Like, what can I?
00:07:32
Speaker 1: These were the jobs that seemed available to you. As, like, a buff dude, basically?
00:07:38
Speaker 2: Yeah. So, like, I can't go be a cop. I can't go be a Marine. Like, that won't work. That won't do.
00:07:44
Speaker 1: A career in gay sex work. It feels transgressive to Davin. His way of giving the finger to toxic masculinity, which he believes his dad got trapped by. So Davin decides to start an OnlyFans. In case you're not familiar, OnlyFans is for porn. what Patreon is for podcasts, or Substack for newsletters. It's a site for creators. Anyone over 18 can start an OnlyFans page, and then people pay performers directly to see their content, mainly explicit photos and videos. It's direct, it's legal, and it lets people like Davin work independently from home. What I learned from Davin is how important Instagram, obviously a totally separate platform from OnlyFans and much more mainstream... how important it can be for an adult performer like him as a marketing tool. Because I guess OnlyFans doesn't have a For You page that recommends other accounts you might be interested in following the way apps like Instagram and TikTok do. So in order to build an audience, Davin would use his account on Instagram, which has much broader reach, as an advertisement to drive followers over to his OnlyFans page, which is where they could pay to get more explicit photos of him. Instagram has guidelines about how graphic you can be So the posts there are teases.
00:09:03
Speaker 2: You couldn't post like full nudity, but like you figure out how to be like playful and like, you know, cheeky. I could just like post pictures of like ass out on Instagram. And it was crazy, like the amount of traffic I was getting. It was pretty easy. But yeah, really basic concept. It's like the more followers I can get, the more eyes that are going to be on, you know, this link.
00:09:33
Speaker 1: A link from Instagram over to OnlyFans. This business model, using clever posts on Insta for free to advertise his paid OnlyFans. It allows Davin to build a business pretty fast.
00:09:46
Speaker 2: I was probably making like three, four grand on an OnlyFans page.
00:09:50
Speaker 1: That's three or four grand a month. How much are you working? Is it a 40-hour-a-week gig I mean, shoot.
00:09:56
Speaker 2: I was just taking dick pics, dude. I wasn't particularly working a lot.
00:10:04
Speaker 1: And he's doing it without a boss. It's his business. He's in control. OnlyFans takes a cut, but he's working when he wants, weight training when he wants. By this point, Devin has left Wyoming. He's living in Idaho. Things are going pretty well. He's got a girlfriend. He's built up about 100,000 followers on Instagram, a legit audience. And then, suddenly, as if with the flick of a switch.
00:10:27
Speaker 2: Literally, shit just started getting pulled down. Like, things just started getting pulled down. They'd be like, we're going to ban your account if you keep doing this.
00:10:33
Speaker 4: And then.
00:10:34
Speaker 2: And that happened kind of abruptly? Abruptly, yeah. Like, abruptly.
00:10:39
Speaker 1: Little did Devin know, some decisions had been made in D.C. that were about to dramatically affect his life. On April 11, 2018, in his first term, President Trump signed a new bill into law.
00:10:52
Speaker 5: Thank you very much for being with us today as we sign this crucial legislation to combat online sex trafficking and bring criminals to justice.
00:11:03
Speaker 1: It was called FOSTA-SESTA, the Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act. That's the FOSTA. And Stop Enabling Sex Trafficking Act, SESTA. Two bills, one from the House, one from the Senate, mushed into one. The legislation was Congress's response to years of anger over sites like Backpage.com. Backpage was a classified ad site where people advertised sexual services, stripping, escorting. But traffickers used it to advertise prostitution, including of minors. In 2014, a group of women who'd been trafficked as kids sued Backpage. They said the company knew what was happening and even gave traffickers tools to cover it up. But multiple courts blocked the women's case.
00:11:47
Speaker 2: The reason?
00:11:48
Speaker 1: Section 230. Judges said the allegations were horrifying, but ruled that the law still shielded Backpage from being liable for content posted by its users, even when those users were regularly sex traffickers. People were outraged, including members of Congress, like Republican Senator Rob Portman of Ohio.
00:12:08
Speaker 6: The Communications Decency Act is a well-intentioned law. It was originally enacted back in 1996. when the internet was in its infancy.
00:12:16
Speaker 1: Senator Portman and others wanted to change Section 230. For the first time, they would strip the immunity from lawsuits away from platforms if they knowingly helped sex traffickers.
00:12:27
Speaker 6: It's past time we update this 21-year-old law for the 21st century and allow victims who have had their most basic human rights violated get justice against those who facilitated these crimes.
00:12:40
Speaker 1: There were other parts of the law, too, not directly related to Section 230. that were aimed at making it easier to go after sites criminally when they enabled sex traffickers. It's the kind of law that seems like a no-brainer on the surface. Who doesn't want to stop sex trafficking, give victims some recourse? It passed overwhelmingly in the House. In the Senate, only two lawmakers voted against it. Some legal experts warned Congress that changing Section 230 in this way would lead to unintended consequences, that platforms wouldn't just target traffickers. They'd overcorrect, go after lots of other speech that was totally legal but sex-adjacent, and that this could put sex workers in more danger. And that did happen.
00:13:24
Speaker 2: I could no longer post my butt cheeks.
00:13:28
Speaker 1: Davin wasn't clocked into the debate over Section 230 happening in Washington. He didn't tune into the signing of FOSTA-SESTA on C-SPAN. All he knew was that suddenly, Instagram started taking down his booty shots. These were images that, until a day before, Davin says Instagram was not only allowing, but encouraging. He says they were boosting these same posts with their algorithm.
00:13:49
Speaker 2: It was very overt. You know, the cute, cheeky pictures would get tons of likes and huge traffic. I was getting huge boosts in followers.
00:13:58
Speaker 1: And then, overnight, censored. Those same photos were blocked. Instagram's terms of service stated that they did not allow, this is a direct quote, Fully nude close-ups of buttocks. And when they started enforcing that with Davin, his traffic plunged.
00:14:15
Speaker 2: I probably went down to like $ 500 to like $ 1, 000. Monthly. You're talking monthly here. Yeah, monthly.
00:14:20
Speaker 1: From $ 3, 000 to $ 4, 000 a month pre-2018. Yeah. And then Davin's Instagram page was shut down completely. Probably because of this line Instagram added to its policies after FOSTA-SESTA passed. We allow for the discussion of sex worker rights advocacy and sex work regulation. We draw the line, however, when content facilitates, encourages, or coordinates sexual encounters or commercial sexual services between adults. Instagram wasn't the only one to react. After Fostacesta, Tumblr banned porn, Craigslist shut down its personal section, which was being used to advertise sex work. This is the Section 230 butterfly effect in action. Congress changed the law in a way that was supposed to hold companies responsible if they were knowingly allowing sex trafficking. But the companies were like, we're not going to risk this. We're going to nix anything that might look like sex trafficking. It's just easier and safer for us that way. And so Davin, out in Idaho, suddenly finds that the Instagram account he spent years amassing 100,000 followers on is gone. He can no longer use it to advertise his OnlyFans with those cheeky posts. His business is decimated. At that moment when like the money plummeted, how did it affect your life?
00:15:39
Speaker 2: Well, like, like I guess urgency, it's like, what am I going to do? Um, that's when I started, I had to make hard decisions, which I guess that's really the topic of this is like, I had to start making hard decisions cause I didn't have, uh, that ease of income that I saw, uh, that was going to happen for me from just being like a fitness model posting dick pics. And I was like, well, I might have to do To speak to my capacity for insane shit, I might have to do harder things now. You know, I might have to expand my boundaries.
00:16:12
Speaker 1: What expanding his boundaries entailed. After a quick break. Had you done hardcore porn before that?
00:16:19
Speaker 2: No. No. Okay.
00:16:21
Speaker 4: No.
00:16:32
Speaker 1: With his online business throttled by Instagram, Davin starts looking for other work. He tries out for the WWE, but doesn't make it. He moves to Vegas and gets a spot in Chippendales, but he slips a disc in his back and has to stop dancing. He still wants to work in the sex industry. He feels it suits him. Plus, he's been able to make more money doing that than he would flipping burgers. He dabbled over the years with some in-person escorting. So he decides, you know, when in Vegas, why not try to make a living as a male escort?
00:17:01
Speaker 2: It was just like, what else am I going to do? You know, what else am I going to do? I'm just going to buy into escorting.
00:17:06
Speaker 1: You're saying it like it was no big deal. Like, I'll just buy into escorting. How did you feel about it?
00:17:11
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, these are important. You're bringing to light some of my disassociation. Okay. No, this is important where it's like, how did I feel? Yeah, I must have been scared. Yeah, I was. I think I was scared.
00:17:26
Speaker 1: Devin's work on the campsite, on Instagram, on OnlyFans, He was always working from the safety of his own apartment. In-person escorting is a whole different world, much riskier.
00:17:36
Speaker 2: I'm meeting up with random, mostly men. I've had like, I've had hundreds of men hire me. And I probably had like three women. But so many, many just strange men. Still makes me uncomfortable. I mean, I'm just meeting with a dude, you know, and I didn't know really how shit worked. I'm like, is this guy a cop? Most of the time they're like scared and they think I'm a cop, right? Like, you know, you meet up with them and like, I was less like yatted at that point. So I didn't have the face tattoo. I just looked like jarheaded.
00:18:09
Speaker 1: And is it kind of a gray area of legality or not? What's happening?
00:18:12
Speaker 2: Yeah. I mean, like you try to like talk around like what's actually happening, like in these messages. And I knew better at this point too. I started taking people off Instagram. So I'd like send them to like a burner number. Because even in the DMs and Instagram, they'll flag you for solicitation. So I'd be like, oh, yeah, you're interested in this service. You can talk with me here. Oh, you want to meet up? That's how I started advertising. It was like, oh, you can do paid meetups. You can meet up with me. Because nothing illegal about meeting up.
00:18:44
Speaker 1: These kinds of escorting gigs can range from simple companionship, going with somebody to see Les Mis, to sex. But there's no real vetting process. Devin is flying by instinct. And before we go any further, it's important to say, FOSTA-SESTA was responding to real harm. People were being trafficked online, children included. According to federal authorities, Backpage.com made $ 500 million in prostitution-related income. Section 230 had prevented victims from getting compensation for Backpage by suing them. The mother of one of these victims, Yvonne Ambrose, gave searing testimony to senators about what happened to her daughter, Desiree.
00:19:26
Speaker 4: Desiree was a good person who just wanted to be loved and accepted by all. She was only 16 years old and just wanted to make friends. We now know that adult men found Desiree on social media, reached out to her, pressured her, and used her to make money. She was preyed on and sold online by pimps who took advantage of her. On December 23rd, 23, 2016, a 32-year-old man by the name of Antonio Rosales was looking through Backpage.com for a child to have a sex with. Just like countless others before him, they knew that this was a website that they could go to to engage in sex with minors. During his search, he came upon a picture of my 16-year-old daughter. Desiree was driven to Antonio's residence by the pimp with the intent of having sex with this 32-year-old man, a man twice her age. This was the last night.
00:20:34
Speaker 2: Of my daughter's life.
00:20:38
Speaker 1: The man murdered Desiree?
00:20:40
Speaker 4: The truth is Backpage.com and other sites are making millions of dollars by exploiting our children. I struggle to believe that a loving and talented girl such as Desiree is gone from this earth because an act such as 230 allowed the Internet to exploit her. And now Section 230 is standing in a way of justice for my child and other Jane Doe's out there like her.
00:21:17
Speaker 1: As FOSTA-SESTA was being passed, the government shut down Backpage and prosecuted its founders and executives. One was convicted of a money laundering count and sentenced to five years in prison. Another died by suicide before his trial. Two others cooperated for lighter sentences, pleading guilty to conspiracy to facilitate prostitution. The DOJ also set up a $ 200 million compensation fund for victims. They didn't need FOSTA-SESTA to do this, to go after the company criminally. But now, because of FOSTA-SESTA, victims of sex trafficking can directly sue websites, like Backpage, that are used to exploit them. And there have been lawsuits like this. But so far, they have not resulted in some huge victory for victims. There have been no big winds of damages. Judges seem confused by how to interpret FOSTA-SESTA, honestly, which critics say was poorly written. Meanwhile, some cops have complained... that it actually got harder to do investigations into sex trafficking under FOSTA-SESTA, that they'd been using Backpage as a trap for catching human traffickers and pimps. And now that activity is harder to uncover. And it also made it more difficult for many sex workers, Davin included, to make a living, putting them in more dangerous, real-life situations. One time, a client Davin met online flew him to Florida.
00:22:33
Speaker 2: This guy just seemed weird, but he was going to give me Probably only like, probably like two grand or something. But I was like, I need two grand. So I flew to Florida and this guy, he had like, he had strange energy about him. He seemed generally anxious and maybe had very, I think he had very conservative politics, which is also always like kind of unsettling when it's like a gay closeted man with like you know, super conservative politics. He flies me down there. And so I'm just uncomfortable. And he wants me to sleep on top of him the whole night. Okay. That's like his thing. He's like, I just want to feel the pressure of you on top of me the whole night. So like, I'm sleeping. I'm like laying on this dude. And I'm like, you know what? I think I'm having a panic attack. Oh, so I stand up and I'm like, Hey, I'll just be back in a minute. And I go sit on his couch and he comes out like fuming pissed off that like, that I've like, stopped laying on top.
00:23:32
Speaker 1: Of him oh wow and he's like i paid.
00:23:33
Speaker 2: For you to do this he's like i paid for you flew your ass out here like what are you doing quote for quote he said you could be fucking digging ditches somewhere and you're getting paid money to come fucking sleep on me and now you're acting like this and i'm like man like i'm like i'm you know like what can i say brother like i'm doing my best and he's like screaming at me get the fuck out.
00:23:57
Speaker 1: Why do you think you had a panic attack I think.
00:23:59
Speaker 2: There's a general discomfort and, you know, yeah, I just wasn't feeling safe.
00:24:04
Speaker 1: Devin ends up wandering out into a rainstorm in Florida, calling a friend to book him a flight home. After Googling the man and seeing he was a retired cop, he sent him his deposit back. There were other bizarre and harrowing experiences.
00:24:17
Speaker 2: I had this like, like one percenter ass, like super fucking wealthy Chinese businessman that hired me To be his pet bodybuilder, a champion pet bodybuilder. So he starts paying me a monthly stipend. It was like three and a half thousand dollars, which isn't like a ton of money, but it was to see him twice a month. So I was like, okay, like that's nice and easy. You know, on paper, but essentially he wanted like a BDSM slave that was also winning fucking bodybuilding shows.
00:24:53
Speaker 1: Devin actually had to negotiate this arrangement down. He says at first the guy wanted to pay him five figures a month to be at his beck and call 24-7 to keep himself in tip-top shape, compete in bodybuilding competitions, and then come be his BDSM submissive whenever the guy wanted. But Davin wasn't comfortable with that. The first time Davin shows up at this businessman's house, another guy, not the client, answers the door. Davin has no idea who he is. He's walking into this stranger's house all alone, trying to quickly figure out, am I safe? Who's this other dude? What's the relationship here? He would come to learn this other guy was like a kept man, had lived with the businessman for years. Part of what's particularly challenging with in-person escorting and BDSM jobs in particular, Devin's in other people's houses trying to quickly assess if he can trust them, if he's safe.
00:25:41
Speaker 2: You're in his house, his private home, and he's like torturing me in his little dungeon. I've like shared my location with some people, I guess, but I'm like still weird situation tied up in some random man's home. So yeah, a level of danger there.
00:25:55
Speaker 1: This is the kind of thing Devin found himself doing over and over again, both with this man and many other clients, to get by. During this time, Devin saw other adult performers and sex workers complaining about similar problems. A 2021 Columbia Human Rights Law Review study found that Internet companies restricted more content than was probably necessary to avoid liability under FOSTA-SESTA. which drove sex workers to more dangerous situations and got rid of support systems they had previously had online. Because of this, some sex workers became serious advocates for Section 230. Here's a former dominatrix being interviewed at a protest in L.A. She had been making a living teaching BDSM classes online.
00:26:39
Speaker 4: All my classes were taken down.
00:26:41
Speaker 1: I was kicked off a bunch of sites.
00:26:43
Speaker 2: So in my 50s, I had to go back to doing sex work because of the spill.
00:26:48
Speaker 1: And this is an OnlyFans creator. doing a live conversation about the impact of FOSTA-SESTA.
00:26:52
Speaker 7: It's getting harder and harder and harder for sex workers to survive online, who are already basically kicked off everywhere. We're shadow banned on Instagram. We get banned on TikTok for, like, breathing. We can't even say OnlyFans on TikTok. We're banned.
00:27:04
Speaker 1: Davin was not so plugged into the advocacy scene. He wasn't read up on Section 230. He just heard there was some government push to go after sex trafficking, and the tech companies changed their policies because of it.
00:27:16
Speaker 2: All I... new is that it changed the terms and use of like these social media pages that was my understanding.
00:27:23
Speaker 1: No more ass cheeks because of this law basically.
00:27:26
Speaker 2: No more ass cheeks no more ass cheeks which yeah i'm like what does this have to do with sex trafficking you fuckers.
00:27:31
Speaker 1: And then did you dig into it more was there a curiosity there or you're just kind of like.
00:27:35
Speaker 2: Um yeah i mean i dug into it a little bit but you know a lot of it over my head um and a lot of it i think there's so much of like I don't know, a lot of it feels very disingenuous because there's a lot of just like theological bullshit that comes in that where people are like, oh, this is a good time for us to, you know, to attack smut.
00:27:55
Speaker 1: There's one last turn in Devin's story. He wanted to do less in-person escorting. So he starts trying to rebuild his Instagram audience on a new account. He's doing his best to follow the new rules, keep his posts within the guidelines. But in the post-Fostacesta world, His content's not traveling like it used to. He says the algorithm's no longer recommending him to new users. He's just reaching the same people who already follow him. He's convinced he's being shadow banned.
00:28:25
Speaker 2: The way these shadow bans work, you're viewable by your current following. You just can't really build a new following. So in order to get around that, you're like, OK, we need to access other people's followings.
00:28:38
Speaker 1: That is, get his content in front of followers on other accounts. And the way to do that on Instagram these days is with collab posts. Collab posts are when you and another account jointly put up a grid post, and it gets fed to all of your combined followers. After FOSTA-SESTA, Davin realizes this is what he needs to do to get in front of new people, collaborate on posts with other adult performers.
00:29:04
Speaker 2: I would go to West Hollywood, and we'd film a porn scene, and then we would advertise that porn scene on Instagram in like, you know, coy ways. Be like, I would always joke, I'd be like, we filmed a kissing documentary, you know, like that kind of thing.
00:29:20
Speaker 1: So the porn itself is not on Instagram. That wouldn't fly. Just the coy ad for it in the form of a collab post with the other performer. And then if you go over to OnlyFans, that's where you can buy the kissing documentary. That's how Davin and the other performers make money. Had you done hardcore porn before that?
00:29:39
Speaker 5: No.
00:29:40
Speaker 2: No. Okay. No.
00:29:43
Speaker 1: Before, on his OnlyFans, Davin only posted pics and videos of him alone, not having sex with other people. So before you could be solo, you could be like a solo performer.
00:29:53
Speaker 2: Exactly.
00:29:53
Speaker 1: And then just the change in the algorithm forced you.
00:29:58
Speaker 4: Exactly.
00:29:58
Speaker 2: Exactly.
00:29:59
Speaker 1: Like to kind of cunningly do collaborations, which in your work, a collaboration means porn.
00:30:05
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly.
00:30:06
Speaker 1: Like hardcore porn.
00:30:07
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's exactly what happened. I started doing hardcore porn as a result of that.
00:30:12
Speaker 1: Does that feel safer than like these in-person meetups?
00:30:17
Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure. Yeah, definitely. You know, that was a safe way to make money. It just came with like the implications of doing hardcore gay porn. I guess that's something, you know, I hesitated to do for a while. Probably due to social stigma.
00:30:33
Speaker 1: Devin gets to a place co-releasing these porn videos with other performers where he's making more money than he was before FOSTA-SESTA was passed. Sometimes 10K a month.
00:30:43
Speaker 2: He says.
00:30:44
Speaker 1: But still, he backs away from it. He'd been reluctant to do hardcore porn. He only tried it because he felt he had to after FOSTA-SESTA if he wanted to make a living again online. He'll still do it once in a while, he says, but these days he's mostly getting by bartending at a Vegas go-go bar and doing in-person work again, though he's much more choosy.
00:31:04
Speaker 2: I guess over the years I've accumulated a client base, like a roster that's really easy. So I honestly mostly do like massage, like guys hire me just to do massage. I don't really do anything overtly sexual. I'll do some like pro-doming stuff. They'll hire me to like yell at them, you know, and like, Hit them and then go out to dinners. So I do a lot of that. I do a lot of what's called boyfriend experience, where it's not even overtly sexual, but people just want to banter with me. They've enjoyed me from my years of porn. They enjoyed me from my presence online writing about masculinity. So guys will hire me for that still.
00:31:46
Speaker 1: If you feel a little confused about what to take away from Davin's story, I get it. Me too. The change to Section 230 definitely messed with his life. His work got harder and riskier for a while. Then he found a way to safely make more money than he was before the change. But it was doing hardcore porn, something he wouldn't have previously said yes to. Now things have kind of leveled out. There's not a clean takeaway. And I don't think there's a clean takeaway from the Fostacesta story either. The law is convoluted. It ties together civil and criminal laws and tech law. and a web of state sex trafficking statutes. It was meant to help sex trafficking victims, but in its seven-plus years, it appears to have been used once, criminally, to go after a website for sex trafficking. Victims are using it to sue companies, and they're getting further than they would have before. But still, the success rate there is not good. Victims' cases still get tossed out or appealed or stalled. People point to the Backpage shutdown as a win for FOSTA-SESTA, But legally, the government didn't use FOSTA-SESTA to do that. And shutting down Backpage may have made it harder for law enforcement to stop sex trafficking. It's confusing. Davin agrees. When I asked him, what do you make of this whole situation? Congress was trying to help sex trafficking victims. But in doing that, they messed with your life. He says it kind of knots up his brain.
00:33:11
Speaker 2: Like, what can I do other than be a voice that's like, sex trafficking is bad, obviously. Um, sex work means for people to make money. Good.
00:33:21
Speaker 1: You know, this is going to sound like a callous question, but I'm asking it just anticipating the variety of people who might listen to this. Why should we care that it's harder for you to do sex work?
00:33:34
Speaker 2: I think it all comes back to poverty. People should be concerned about the poor and people who have had to make, you know, hard choices to make money. And that, that would be me or sex workers.
00:33:44
Speaker 6: Right.
00:33:45
Speaker 2: And this is who that's affecting is people who could otherwise not make comfortable living wages otherwise. If you fundamentally have an issue with sex work, then I think you have to address the issue of poverty.
00:34:06
Speaker 1: As I've seen one Section 230 expert put it, when it comes to these policy choices about the Internet, everyone has unavoidable major downsides. Where you come down on it depends on what you think is the least worst option, as he puts it. Some people think Section 230 is the least worst option. That what happened with FOSTA-SESTA is proof that changing Section 230 is always doomed. But I don't buy that. This was one specific and, yes, flawed attempt. People were hurt. It doesn't change the fact that Section 230 is still shielding a ton of bad behavior. I believe there are ways to learn from this experience. and do better the next time. And to do that, you have to talk to all sorts of people who could be affected by changes to these policies, especially people who may not be top of mind for policymakers in Washington, like yatted dudes playing Battlefield in shitty apartments in Wyoming. We're continuing the debate over Section 230 and life on the Internet over on our Substack. That's at questioneverything.substack.com. You can join our chat there, leave me a comment, write me. There are a bunch of pushes right now to regulate the Internet in different ways. Just this week, you may have seen the Senate unanimously passed a bill that would help victims of intimate deepfakes sue the people who make them. That's a big one. We'll keep digging into these efforts. Please rate and review us on Apple or Spotify and share it with a friend. Today's show was produced by Sam Egan and edited by our managing editor, Kevin Sullivan. Robin Semien and I are the executive producers of Question Everything. Our team also includes producers Sophie Kazis and Zach St. Louis, contributing editors Neil Drumming and Jen Kinney, and associate producer Kevin Shepard. Additional editing by Zoe Chase. This episode was fact-checked by Annika Robbins, mixed and sound designed by Brendan Baker. Our music is by Matt McGinley. Thanks to our partners at KCRW, who include Arnie Seipel, Tejal Ajmera, Natalie Hill, and Jennifer Farrow. We'll see you next week.
Speaker 1: Many of you regular listeners know I've been arguing that it's time to make changes to a law called Section 230. For the new initiates among you, Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996 is the law that protects websites, apps, social media platforms from lawsuits over posts made by their users. It has shaped almost everything we experience on the internet, for better and for worse. Today on the show, a cautionary tale about what can go wrong when you tinker with this law. I think it's time to update Section 230 for the powerful, algorithmic, and AI-driven internet of today to strip back the immunity that the law currently gives to tech companies who can more or less do what they want right now without the threat of being sued. Now, there is one time when Congress did this. In 2018, lawmakers rolled back a teeny bit of Section 230 They did this with seemingly good intentions. They were trying to stop websites from being used for terrible crimes. But that ended up causing things to go bad in a different way. It hurt a group of people who are already in a risky line of work. People in the sex industry. This whole situation, it definitely gives me pause. I'll say up front that it hasn't thrown me off my mission. I still believe there's a way to reform Section 230 that can do more good than harm. But the story of what happened when Congress did change the law slightly, you can't ignore it. And in fact, there's plenty to learn from it, about how trying to plug one leak on the internet can spring another. So today, we're going to hear from someone who lived through those consequences, a guy who was making a living on OnlyFans, whose life got harder and more dangerous when Congress changed Section 230. At that moment when, like, the money plummeted, how did it affect your life?
00:01:53
Speaker 2: Well, like, I guess urgency. It's like, what am I going to do? I had to make hard decisions.
00:01:59
Speaker 1: From KCRW and Placement Theory, I'm Brian Reed. This is Question Everything. Stick around. This change in 2018 to Section 230. It just so happens my producer, Sam Egan, is close with somebody whose life was turned upside down by it.
00:02:18
Speaker 2: I'm Davin Addison. My stage name is Davin Strong.
00:02:22
Speaker 1: Devin does porn, among other things, in adult entertainment, hence the stage name. He's 30, an old wrestling teammate of my producer Sam's from college in Wyoming, which is where Devin's from. The three of us got on a call one Friday night recently.
00:02:36
Speaker 2: You're in Vegas now? What's that like? Oh, man. Vegas is cool. It's more low-key than people like to imagine it is. It's not anything crazy.
00:02:46
Speaker 3: Although, last time I went, we ate $ 200 worth of sushi between each, each probably.
00:02:50
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah.
00:02:52
Speaker 1: Part of why I was eager to talk to Davin, he's just a regular guy whose life and livelihood got upended by a policy change in D.C. that he didn't even know about. Well, I guess a regular guy who's six feet tall and 280 pounds with thighs the diameter of telephone poles. Davin's ripped, covered head to foot in tattoos. Not intimidating, though. In fact, he's kind of a softie. Davin first tried sex work when he was a junior in college. He was going through some pretty serious mental health challenges and had quit the wrestling team, which had been a huge part of his life. He's broke, was never great at class, but where he excels is fitness. He loves working out.
00:03:33
Speaker 2: I never really knew how I was going to move through the world in any way that wasn't like something physically. And I'm like, so how can I still find a way to like make money and move through the world and do so in a way where I can like still do things I enjoy, which is like be in shape, you know? So I was like, I'm going to go be like a fitness model.
00:03:57
Speaker 1: Devin shoots off some bodybuilding photos to a few magazines and they get back to him. He starts doing some fitness shoots, gets hooked up with a modeling agent.
00:04:05
Speaker 2: He was like, yeah, you have to be around this campsite, a.
00:04:08
Speaker 1: Cam site, not a campsite. Like where people pay to watch models live online, flexing, doing other stuff.
00:04:17
Speaker 2: So I'm like, okay. Um, This seems better than making minimum wage.
00:04:23
Speaker 1: And you were still in college at this point?
00:04:25
Speaker 2: I was in college, yep.
00:04:27
Speaker 1: Living with our producer, Sam, and another guy.
00:04:29
Speaker 3: I remember really vividly you kind of half-joking about it for a couple of weeks. For context, we lived in this awful, disgusting apartment on South 11th.
00:04:37
Speaker 2: Street in Laramie, Wyoming, on the literal edge of town. Nothing there. It's like town, nothing. And he quit the team, and.
00:04:46
Speaker 2: For a couple of weeks, he'd been like, ah, I don't know what I'm going to do.
00:04:48
Speaker 3: I think I, maybe I'll just like jerk off on camera or something like that.
00:04:50
Speaker 2: It's like, what was I saying? That's funny. No, that's real.
00:04:56
Speaker 3: I remember when you finally were like, we were in the middle of the living room.
00:04:59
Speaker 2: We're all playing battlefield.
00:05:01
Speaker 3: And damage just stands up and like stands in the middle of the hallway.
00:05:04
Speaker 2: And there's a short hallway. And then it goes left to his room and right to my room. He's quiet for a minute.
00:05:09
Speaker 3: And then he just kind of looks at us and we all stop. Cause he's like, stood up like he's going to make an announcement. And he's like, all right, I'm going to do it. I'm going to go jerk off on camera now.
00:05:17
Speaker 2: I'm doing it.
00:05:19
Speaker 3: And then you went in your room.
00:05:22
Speaker 2: And that was it.
00:05:23
Speaker 1: Wow. That was your first day at work.
00:05:26
Speaker 2: I guess so. Yeah, I guess so.
00:05:30
Speaker 1: He goes back for a second day at work, a third. People online seem to like Davin. He starts getting fans, particularly men. You're straight, gay.
00:05:41
Speaker 2: Like, how do you identify?
00:05:42
Speaker 1: Okay.
00:05:42
Speaker 2: For a long time, I identified as bi, and now I'll joke and be like, I'm like spicy straight, or I'll be like, you know, I'm just like, I'm just queer, like, you know, whatever. Just like, you know, generally prefer, have a preference, like a heavy preference for women. Can't enjoy men in certain contexts, and was very open-minded.
00:06:01
Speaker 1: Devin had a tough upbringing, a lot in the shadow of his dad, a big, intense guy who was also abusive. Devin always felt forced into a lot of limiting stereotypes. about what it means to be a man, how important it was to prove that you were tough. His dad was a Marine. Davin grew up wrestling. But the world of wrestling, the whole macho scene he was in out West, it started to bother him.
00:06:25
Speaker 2: These systems that alienate men and teach men to be, you know, push their feelings down and teach men that this is the only way to be a man. I was just like, yeah, tired of getting beat up, you know, wrestling culture, just like cowboy.
00:06:38
Speaker 1: Culture, Davin is in the middle of figuring out how to make enough money to support himself in college when something terrible happens. His dad, who had been facing charges of sex crimes, is killed by police after he points a rifle at them. Davin believes it was suicide by cop. It's all over the news.
00:06:57
Speaker 2: All that very much traumatized me.
00:07:00
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, man.
00:07:01
Speaker 2: Oh, you know, many moons. But I was able to quickly pinpoint, like, well, why is my dad dead? Like, why do I feel so lonely?
00:07:10
Speaker 1: Devin drops out of college. His mom has her own struggles and isn't a big part of his life. He's poor with nowhere to go home to. He's trying to land on what quote unquote normal career might be available to a guy like him. But none of the paths feel right.
00:07:24
Speaker 2: I was like seeing people like, you know, join the military or go be cops. And I was like, oh, I don't really fuck with that. Like, what can I?
00:07:32
Speaker 1: These were the jobs that seemed available to you. As, like, a buff dude, basically?
00:07:38
Speaker 2: Yeah. So, like, I can't go be a cop. I can't go be a Marine. Like, that won't work. That won't do.
00:07:44
Speaker 1: A career in gay sex work. It feels transgressive to Davin. His way of giving the finger to toxic masculinity, which he believes his dad got trapped by. So Davin decides to start an OnlyFans. In case you're not familiar, OnlyFans is for porn. what Patreon is for podcasts, or Substack for newsletters. It's a site for creators. Anyone over 18 can start an OnlyFans page, and then people pay performers directly to see their content, mainly explicit photos and videos. It's direct, it's legal, and it lets people like Davin work independently from home. What I learned from Davin is how important Instagram, obviously a totally separate platform from OnlyFans and much more mainstream... how important it can be for an adult performer like him as a marketing tool. Because I guess OnlyFans doesn't have a For You page that recommends other accounts you might be interested in following the way apps like Instagram and TikTok do. So in order to build an audience, Davin would use his account on Instagram, which has much broader reach, as an advertisement to drive followers over to his OnlyFans page, which is where they could pay to get more explicit photos of him. Instagram has guidelines about how graphic you can be So the posts there are teases.
00:09:03
Speaker 2: You couldn't post like full nudity, but like you figure out how to be like playful and like, you know, cheeky. I could just like post pictures of like ass out on Instagram. And it was crazy, like the amount of traffic I was getting. It was pretty easy. But yeah, really basic concept. It's like the more followers I can get, the more eyes that are going to be on, you know, this link.
00:09:33
Speaker 1: A link from Instagram over to OnlyFans. This business model, using clever posts on Insta for free to advertise his paid OnlyFans. It allows Davin to build a business pretty fast.
00:09:46
Speaker 2: I was probably making like three, four grand on an OnlyFans page.
00:09:50
Speaker 1: That's three or four grand a month. How much are you working? Is it a 40-hour-a-week gig I mean, shoot.
00:09:56
Speaker 2: I was just taking dick pics, dude. I wasn't particularly working a lot.
00:10:04
Speaker 1: And he's doing it without a boss. It's his business. He's in control. OnlyFans takes a cut, but he's working when he wants, weight training when he wants. By this point, Devin has left Wyoming. He's living in Idaho. Things are going pretty well. He's got a girlfriend. He's built up about 100,000 followers on Instagram, a legit audience. And then, suddenly, as if with the flick of a switch.
00:10:27
Speaker 2: Literally, shit just started getting pulled down. Like, things just started getting pulled down. They'd be like, we're going to ban your account if you keep doing this.
00:10:33
Speaker 4: And then.
00:10:34
Speaker 2: And that happened kind of abruptly? Abruptly, yeah. Like, abruptly.
00:10:39
Speaker 1: Little did Devin know, some decisions had been made in D.C. that were about to dramatically affect his life. On April 11, 2018, in his first term, President Trump signed a new bill into law.
00:10:52
Speaker 5: Thank you very much for being with us today as we sign this crucial legislation to combat online sex trafficking and bring criminals to justice.
00:11:03
Speaker 1: It was called FOSTA-SESTA, the Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act. That's the FOSTA. And Stop Enabling Sex Trafficking Act, SESTA. Two bills, one from the House, one from the Senate, mushed into one. The legislation was Congress's response to years of anger over sites like Backpage.com. Backpage was a classified ad site where people advertised sexual services, stripping, escorting. But traffickers used it to advertise prostitution, including of minors. In 2014, a group of women who'd been trafficked as kids sued Backpage. They said the company knew what was happening and even gave traffickers tools to cover it up. But multiple courts blocked the women's case.
00:11:47
Speaker 2: The reason?
00:11:48
Speaker 1: Section 230. Judges said the allegations were horrifying, but ruled that the law still shielded Backpage from being liable for content posted by its users, even when those users were regularly sex traffickers. People were outraged, including members of Congress, like Republican Senator Rob Portman of Ohio.
00:12:08
Speaker 6: The Communications Decency Act is a well-intentioned law. It was originally enacted back in 1996. when the internet was in its infancy.
00:12:16
Speaker 1: Senator Portman and others wanted to change Section 230. For the first time, they would strip the immunity from lawsuits away from platforms if they knowingly helped sex traffickers.
00:12:27
Speaker 6: It's past time we update this 21-year-old law for the 21st century and allow victims who have had their most basic human rights violated get justice against those who facilitated these crimes.
00:12:40
Speaker 1: There were other parts of the law, too, not directly related to Section 230. that were aimed at making it easier to go after sites criminally when they enabled sex traffickers. It's the kind of law that seems like a no-brainer on the surface. Who doesn't want to stop sex trafficking, give victims some recourse? It passed overwhelmingly in the House. In the Senate, only two lawmakers voted against it. Some legal experts warned Congress that changing Section 230 in this way would lead to unintended consequences, that platforms wouldn't just target traffickers. They'd overcorrect, go after lots of other speech that was totally legal but sex-adjacent, and that this could put sex workers in more danger. And that did happen.
00:13:24
Speaker 2: I could no longer post my butt cheeks.
00:13:28
Speaker 1: Davin wasn't clocked into the debate over Section 230 happening in Washington. He didn't tune into the signing of FOSTA-SESTA on C-SPAN. All he knew was that suddenly, Instagram started taking down his booty shots. These were images that, until a day before, Davin says Instagram was not only allowing, but encouraging. He says they were boosting these same posts with their algorithm.
00:13:49
Speaker 2: It was very overt. You know, the cute, cheeky pictures would get tons of likes and huge traffic. I was getting huge boosts in followers.
00:13:58
Speaker 1: And then, overnight, censored. Those same photos were blocked. Instagram's terms of service stated that they did not allow, this is a direct quote, Fully nude close-ups of buttocks. And when they started enforcing that with Davin, his traffic plunged.
00:14:15
Speaker 2: I probably went down to like $ 500 to like $ 1, 000. Monthly. You're talking monthly here. Yeah, monthly.
00:14:20
Speaker 1: From $ 3, 000 to $ 4, 000 a month pre-2018. Yeah. And then Davin's Instagram page was shut down completely. Probably because of this line Instagram added to its policies after FOSTA-SESTA passed. We allow for the discussion of sex worker rights advocacy and sex work regulation. We draw the line, however, when content facilitates, encourages, or coordinates sexual encounters or commercial sexual services between adults. Instagram wasn't the only one to react. After Fostacesta, Tumblr banned porn, Craigslist shut down its personal section, which was being used to advertise sex work. This is the Section 230 butterfly effect in action. Congress changed the law in a way that was supposed to hold companies responsible if they were knowingly allowing sex trafficking. But the companies were like, we're not going to risk this. We're going to nix anything that might look like sex trafficking. It's just easier and safer for us that way. And so Davin, out in Idaho, suddenly finds that the Instagram account he spent years amassing 100,000 followers on is gone. He can no longer use it to advertise his OnlyFans with those cheeky posts. His business is decimated. At that moment when like the money plummeted, how did it affect your life?
00:15:39
Speaker 2: Well, like, like I guess urgency, it's like, what am I going to do? Um, that's when I started, I had to make hard decisions, which I guess that's really the topic of this is like, I had to start making hard decisions cause I didn't have, uh, that ease of income that I saw, uh, that was going to happen for me from just being like a fitness model posting dick pics. And I was like, well, I might have to do To speak to my capacity for insane shit, I might have to do harder things now. You know, I might have to expand my boundaries.
00:16:12
Speaker 1: What expanding his boundaries entailed. After a quick break. Had you done hardcore porn before that?
00:16:19
Speaker 2: No. No. Okay.
00:16:21
Speaker 4: No.
00:16:32
Speaker 1: With his online business throttled by Instagram, Davin starts looking for other work. He tries out for the WWE, but doesn't make it. He moves to Vegas and gets a spot in Chippendales, but he slips a disc in his back and has to stop dancing. He still wants to work in the sex industry. He feels it suits him. Plus, he's been able to make more money doing that than he would flipping burgers. He dabbled over the years with some in-person escorting. So he decides, you know, when in Vegas, why not try to make a living as a male escort?
00:17:01
Speaker 2: It was just like, what else am I going to do? You know, what else am I going to do? I'm just going to buy into escorting.
00:17:06
Speaker 1: You're saying it like it was no big deal. Like, I'll just buy into escorting. How did you feel about it?
00:17:11
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, these are important. You're bringing to light some of my disassociation. Okay. No, this is important where it's like, how did I feel? Yeah, I must have been scared. Yeah, I was. I think I was scared.
00:17:26
Speaker 1: Devin's work on the campsite, on Instagram, on OnlyFans, He was always working from the safety of his own apartment. In-person escorting is a whole different world, much riskier.
00:17:36
Speaker 2: I'm meeting up with random, mostly men. I've had like, I've had hundreds of men hire me. And I probably had like three women. But so many, many just strange men. Still makes me uncomfortable. I mean, I'm just meeting with a dude, you know, and I didn't know really how shit worked. I'm like, is this guy a cop? Most of the time they're like scared and they think I'm a cop, right? Like, you know, you meet up with them and like, I was less like yatted at that point. So I didn't have the face tattoo. I just looked like jarheaded.
00:18:09
Speaker 1: And is it kind of a gray area of legality or not? What's happening?
00:18:12
Speaker 2: Yeah. I mean, like you try to like talk around like what's actually happening, like in these messages. And I knew better at this point too. I started taking people off Instagram. So I'd like send them to like a burner number. Because even in the DMs and Instagram, they'll flag you for solicitation. So I'd be like, oh, yeah, you're interested in this service. You can talk with me here. Oh, you want to meet up? That's how I started advertising. It was like, oh, you can do paid meetups. You can meet up with me. Because nothing illegal about meeting up.
00:18:44
Speaker 1: These kinds of escorting gigs can range from simple companionship, going with somebody to see Les Mis, to sex. But there's no real vetting process. Devin is flying by instinct. And before we go any further, it's important to say, FOSTA-SESTA was responding to real harm. People were being trafficked online, children included. According to federal authorities, Backpage.com made $ 500 million in prostitution-related income. Section 230 had prevented victims from getting compensation for Backpage by suing them. The mother of one of these victims, Yvonne Ambrose, gave searing testimony to senators about what happened to her daughter, Desiree.
00:19:26
Speaker 4: Desiree was a good person who just wanted to be loved and accepted by all. She was only 16 years old and just wanted to make friends. We now know that adult men found Desiree on social media, reached out to her, pressured her, and used her to make money. She was preyed on and sold online by pimps who took advantage of her. On December 23rd, 23, 2016, a 32-year-old man by the name of Antonio Rosales was looking through Backpage.com for a child to have a sex with. Just like countless others before him, they knew that this was a website that they could go to to engage in sex with minors. During his search, he came upon a picture of my 16-year-old daughter. Desiree was driven to Antonio's residence by the pimp with the intent of having sex with this 32-year-old man, a man twice her age. This was the last night.
00:20:34
Speaker 2: Of my daughter's life.
00:20:38
Speaker 1: The man murdered Desiree?
00:20:40
Speaker 4: The truth is Backpage.com and other sites are making millions of dollars by exploiting our children. I struggle to believe that a loving and talented girl such as Desiree is gone from this earth because an act such as 230 allowed the Internet to exploit her. And now Section 230 is standing in a way of justice for my child and other Jane Doe's out there like her.
00:21:17
Speaker 1: As FOSTA-SESTA was being passed, the government shut down Backpage and prosecuted its founders and executives. One was convicted of a money laundering count and sentenced to five years in prison. Another died by suicide before his trial. Two others cooperated for lighter sentences, pleading guilty to conspiracy to facilitate prostitution. The DOJ also set up a $ 200 million compensation fund for victims. They didn't need FOSTA-SESTA to do this, to go after the company criminally. But now, because of FOSTA-SESTA, victims of sex trafficking can directly sue websites, like Backpage, that are used to exploit them. And there have been lawsuits like this. But so far, they have not resulted in some huge victory for victims. There have been no big winds of damages. Judges seem confused by how to interpret FOSTA-SESTA, honestly, which critics say was poorly written. Meanwhile, some cops have complained... that it actually got harder to do investigations into sex trafficking under FOSTA-SESTA, that they'd been using Backpage as a trap for catching human traffickers and pimps. And now that activity is harder to uncover. And it also made it more difficult for many sex workers, Davin included, to make a living, putting them in more dangerous, real-life situations. One time, a client Davin met online flew him to Florida.
00:22:33
Speaker 2: This guy just seemed weird, but he was going to give me Probably only like, probably like two grand or something. But I was like, I need two grand. So I flew to Florida and this guy, he had like, he had strange energy about him. He seemed generally anxious and maybe had very, I think he had very conservative politics, which is also always like kind of unsettling when it's like a gay closeted man with like you know, super conservative politics. He flies me down there. And so I'm just uncomfortable. And he wants me to sleep on top of him the whole night. Okay. That's like his thing. He's like, I just want to feel the pressure of you on top of me the whole night. So like, I'm sleeping. I'm like laying on this dude. And I'm like, you know what? I think I'm having a panic attack. Oh, so I stand up and I'm like, Hey, I'll just be back in a minute. And I go sit on his couch and he comes out like fuming pissed off that like, that I've like, stopped laying on top.
00:23:32
Speaker 1: Of him oh wow and he's like i paid.
00:23:33
Speaker 2: For you to do this he's like i paid for you flew your ass out here like what are you doing quote for quote he said you could be fucking digging ditches somewhere and you're getting paid money to come fucking sleep on me and now you're acting like this and i'm like man like i'm like i'm you know like what can i say brother like i'm doing my best and he's like screaming at me get the fuck out.
00:23:57
Speaker 1: Why do you think you had a panic attack I think.
00:23:59
Speaker 2: There's a general discomfort and, you know, yeah, I just wasn't feeling safe.
00:24:04
Speaker 1: Devin ends up wandering out into a rainstorm in Florida, calling a friend to book him a flight home. After Googling the man and seeing he was a retired cop, he sent him his deposit back. There were other bizarre and harrowing experiences.
00:24:17
Speaker 2: I had this like, like one percenter ass, like super fucking wealthy Chinese businessman that hired me To be his pet bodybuilder, a champion pet bodybuilder. So he starts paying me a monthly stipend. It was like three and a half thousand dollars, which isn't like a ton of money, but it was to see him twice a month. So I was like, okay, like that's nice and easy. You know, on paper, but essentially he wanted like a BDSM slave that was also winning fucking bodybuilding shows.
00:24:53
Speaker 1: Devin actually had to negotiate this arrangement down. He says at first the guy wanted to pay him five figures a month to be at his beck and call 24-7 to keep himself in tip-top shape, compete in bodybuilding competitions, and then come be his BDSM submissive whenever the guy wanted. But Davin wasn't comfortable with that. The first time Davin shows up at this businessman's house, another guy, not the client, answers the door. Davin has no idea who he is. He's walking into this stranger's house all alone, trying to quickly figure out, am I safe? Who's this other dude? What's the relationship here? He would come to learn this other guy was like a kept man, had lived with the businessman for years. Part of what's particularly challenging with in-person escorting and BDSM jobs in particular, Devin's in other people's houses trying to quickly assess if he can trust them, if he's safe.
00:25:41
Speaker 2: You're in his house, his private home, and he's like torturing me in his little dungeon. I've like shared my location with some people, I guess, but I'm like still weird situation tied up in some random man's home. So yeah, a level of danger there.
00:25:55
Speaker 1: This is the kind of thing Devin found himself doing over and over again, both with this man and many other clients, to get by. During this time, Devin saw other adult performers and sex workers complaining about similar problems. A 2021 Columbia Human Rights Law Review study found that Internet companies restricted more content than was probably necessary to avoid liability under FOSTA-SESTA. which drove sex workers to more dangerous situations and got rid of support systems they had previously had online. Because of this, some sex workers became serious advocates for Section 230. Here's a former dominatrix being interviewed at a protest in L.A. She had been making a living teaching BDSM classes online.
00:26:39
Speaker 4: All my classes were taken down.
00:26:41
Speaker 1: I was kicked off a bunch of sites.
00:26:43
Speaker 2: So in my 50s, I had to go back to doing sex work because of the spill.
00:26:48
Speaker 1: And this is an OnlyFans creator. doing a live conversation about the impact of FOSTA-SESTA.
00:26:52
Speaker 7: It's getting harder and harder and harder for sex workers to survive online, who are already basically kicked off everywhere. We're shadow banned on Instagram. We get banned on TikTok for, like, breathing. We can't even say OnlyFans on TikTok. We're banned.
00:27:04
Speaker 1: Davin was not so plugged into the advocacy scene. He wasn't read up on Section 230. He just heard there was some government push to go after sex trafficking, and the tech companies changed their policies because of it.
00:27:16
Speaker 2: All I... new is that it changed the terms and use of like these social media pages that was my understanding.
00:27:23
Speaker 1: No more ass cheeks because of this law basically.
00:27:26
Speaker 2: No more ass cheeks no more ass cheeks which yeah i'm like what does this have to do with sex trafficking you fuckers.
00:27:31
Speaker 1: And then did you dig into it more was there a curiosity there or you're just kind of like.
00:27:35
Speaker 2: Um yeah i mean i dug into it a little bit but you know a lot of it over my head um and a lot of it i think there's so much of like I don't know, a lot of it feels very disingenuous because there's a lot of just like theological bullshit that comes in that where people are like, oh, this is a good time for us to, you know, to attack smut.
00:27:55
Speaker 1: There's one last turn in Devin's story. He wanted to do less in-person escorting. So he starts trying to rebuild his Instagram audience on a new account. He's doing his best to follow the new rules, keep his posts within the guidelines. But in the post-Fostacesta world, His content's not traveling like it used to. He says the algorithm's no longer recommending him to new users. He's just reaching the same people who already follow him. He's convinced he's being shadow banned.
00:28:25
Speaker 2: The way these shadow bans work, you're viewable by your current following. You just can't really build a new following. So in order to get around that, you're like, OK, we need to access other people's followings.
00:28:38
Speaker 1: That is, get his content in front of followers on other accounts. And the way to do that on Instagram these days is with collab posts. Collab posts are when you and another account jointly put up a grid post, and it gets fed to all of your combined followers. After FOSTA-SESTA, Davin realizes this is what he needs to do to get in front of new people, collaborate on posts with other adult performers.
00:29:04
Speaker 2: I would go to West Hollywood, and we'd film a porn scene, and then we would advertise that porn scene on Instagram in like, you know, coy ways. Be like, I would always joke, I'd be like, we filmed a kissing documentary, you know, like that kind of thing.
00:29:20
Speaker 1: So the porn itself is not on Instagram. That wouldn't fly. Just the coy ad for it in the form of a collab post with the other performer. And then if you go over to OnlyFans, that's where you can buy the kissing documentary. That's how Davin and the other performers make money. Had you done hardcore porn before that?
00:29:39
Speaker 5: No.
00:29:40
Speaker 2: No. Okay. No.
00:29:43
Speaker 1: Before, on his OnlyFans, Davin only posted pics and videos of him alone, not having sex with other people. So before you could be solo, you could be like a solo performer.
00:29:53
Speaker 2: Exactly.
00:29:53
Speaker 1: And then just the change in the algorithm forced you.
00:29:58
Speaker 4: Exactly.
00:29:58
Speaker 2: Exactly.
00:29:59
Speaker 1: Like to kind of cunningly do collaborations, which in your work, a collaboration means porn.
00:30:05
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly.
00:30:06
Speaker 1: Like hardcore porn.
00:30:07
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's exactly what happened. I started doing hardcore porn as a result of that.
00:30:12
Speaker 1: Does that feel safer than like these in-person meetups?
00:30:17
Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure. Yeah, definitely. You know, that was a safe way to make money. It just came with like the implications of doing hardcore gay porn. I guess that's something, you know, I hesitated to do for a while. Probably due to social stigma.
00:30:33
Speaker 1: Devin gets to a place co-releasing these porn videos with other performers where he's making more money than he was before FOSTA-SESTA was passed. Sometimes 10K a month.
00:30:43
Speaker 2: He says.
00:30:44
Speaker 1: But still, he backs away from it. He'd been reluctant to do hardcore porn. He only tried it because he felt he had to after FOSTA-SESTA if he wanted to make a living again online. He'll still do it once in a while, he says, but these days he's mostly getting by bartending at a Vegas go-go bar and doing in-person work again, though he's much more choosy.
00:31:04
Speaker 2: I guess over the years I've accumulated a client base, like a roster that's really easy. So I honestly mostly do like massage, like guys hire me just to do massage. I don't really do anything overtly sexual. I'll do some like pro-doming stuff. They'll hire me to like yell at them, you know, and like, Hit them and then go out to dinners. So I do a lot of that. I do a lot of what's called boyfriend experience, where it's not even overtly sexual, but people just want to banter with me. They've enjoyed me from my years of porn. They enjoyed me from my presence online writing about masculinity. So guys will hire me for that still.
00:31:46
Speaker 1: If you feel a little confused about what to take away from Davin's story, I get it. Me too. The change to Section 230 definitely messed with his life. His work got harder and riskier for a while. Then he found a way to safely make more money than he was before the change. But it was doing hardcore porn, something he wouldn't have previously said yes to. Now things have kind of leveled out. There's not a clean takeaway. And I don't think there's a clean takeaway from the Fostacesta story either. The law is convoluted. It ties together civil and criminal laws and tech law. and a web of state sex trafficking statutes. It was meant to help sex trafficking victims, but in its seven-plus years, it appears to have been used once, criminally, to go after a website for sex trafficking. Victims are using it to sue companies, and they're getting further than they would have before. But still, the success rate there is not good. Victims' cases still get tossed out or appealed or stalled. People point to the Backpage shutdown as a win for FOSTA-SESTA, But legally, the government didn't use FOSTA-SESTA to do that. And shutting down Backpage may have made it harder for law enforcement to stop sex trafficking. It's confusing. Davin agrees. When I asked him, what do you make of this whole situation? Congress was trying to help sex trafficking victims. But in doing that, they messed with your life. He says it kind of knots up his brain.
00:33:11
Speaker 2: Like, what can I do other than be a voice that's like, sex trafficking is bad, obviously. Um, sex work means for people to make money. Good.
00:33:21
Speaker 1: You know, this is going to sound like a callous question, but I'm asking it just anticipating the variety of people who might listen to this. Why should we care that it's harder for you to do sex work?
00:33:34
Speaker 2: I think it all comes back to poverty. People should be concerned about the poor and people who have had to make, you know, hard choices to make money. And that, that would be me or sex workers.
00:33:44
Speaker 6: Right.
00:33:45
Speaker 2: And this is who that's affecting is people who could otherwise not make comfortable living wages otherwise. If you fundamentally have an issue with sex work, then I think you have to address the issue of poverty.
00:34:06
Speaker 1: As I've seen one Section 230 expert put it, when it comes to these policy choices about the Internet, everyone has unavoidable major downsides. Where you come down on it depends on what you think is the least worst option, as he puts it. Some people think Section 230 is the least worst option. That what happened with FOSTA-SESTA is proof that changing Section 230 is always doomed. But I don't buy that. This was one specific and, yes, flawed attempt. People were hurt. It doesn't change the fact that Section 230 is still shielding a ton of bad behavior. I believe there are ways to learn from this experience. and do better the next time. And to do that, you have to talk to all sorts of people who could be affected by changes to these policies, especially people who may not be top of mind for policymakers in Washington, like yatted dudes playing Battlefield in shitty apartments in Wyoming. We're continuing the debate over Section 230 and life on the Internet over on our Substack. That's at questioneverything.substack.com. You can join our chat there, leave me a comment, write me. There are a bunch of pushes right now to regulate the Internet in different ways. Just this week, you may have seen the Senate unanimously passed a bill that would help victims of intimate deepfakes sue the people who make them. That's a big one. We'll keep digging into these efforts. Please rate and review us on Apple or Spotify and share it with a friend. Today's show was produced by Sam Egan and edited by our managing editor, Kevin Sullivan. Robin Semien and I are the executive producers of Question Everything. Our team also includes producers Sophie Kazis and Zach St. Louis, contributing editors Neil Drumming and Jen Kinney, and associate producer Kevin Shepard. Additional editing by Zoe Chase. This episode was fact-checked by Annika Robbins, mixed and sound designed by Brendan Baker. Our music is by Matt McGinley. Thanks to our partners at KCRW, who include Arnie Seipel, Tejal Ajmera, Natalie Hill, and Jennifer Farrow. We'll see you next week.
