‘Now we don’t have a safe place’: sex workers’ social media site Switter shuts down amid legal fears

A social media platform for sex workers with close to half a million users globally has shut down over legal concerns regarding online safety laws and the Australian government's social media defamation legislation.

Switter, which runs on Twitter-replica Mastodon, was set up by an Australian collective of sex workers and technologists, Assembly Four, in 2018 in response to the anti-sex trafficking legislation known as Sesta/Fosta in the United States leading to a number of sites like Backpage shutting down, or platforms banning sex work content.

Switter works as a safe space by, and for, sex workers, with little concern that their content or accounts will be censored. On the site, sex workers can find each other, share safety information, find clients and find out legal information or service availability.

"There is no fear that we're going to need to censor ourselves," Brisbane-based sex worker Sienna Charles told Guardian Australia. "There is no fear that we're going to be outed."

However, the managers of the site announced on Monday night that they had decided to shut down immediately, telling its more than 420,000 users the raft of "online safety" and defamation laws in the US, UK and Australia made it difficult to keep the platform running.

"The recent anti-sex work and anti-LGBTQIA+ legislative changes not only in Australia, but in the UK, US and other jurisdictions have made it impossible for us to appropriately and ethically maintain compliance over 420,690+ users," the letter states.

The UK is working on bringing in an online safety bill this year similar to that passed in Australia last year. One of the concerns that has led to Switter shutting down is that the Online Safety Act regulates adult content online based on definitions of acceptable content which pre-date the internet. Fetish content, for example, must be removed if a complaint is received.