European Sex Workers’ Rights Alliance
Advocating for sex workers’ digital rights
AI has created new challenges for online sex workers, who are often overlooked as gig economy workers. To counter this, the European AI & Society Fund funded the European Sex Workers’ Rights Alliance (ESWA), a sex worker-led network of more than 100 organisations, overall several years to help sex workers advocate for their digital rights and strengthen a community that is often overlooked.
Funding from the European AI & Society Fund since 2020 has enabled ESWA to be recognised as experts at the intersection of digital and sex workers’ rights. As well as engaging their members, wider civil society and new funders, this is helping them establish relationships with social media platforms to promote an online environment that respects the human rights of sex workers.
The challenge
With the booming of the gig economy in the last decade, platforms like OnlyFans have become essential for sex workers to live stream, message clients, share videos and photos and receive payments. But AI has created challenges for sex workers.
Firstly, platforms are using AI-powered content moderation which can discriminate against them, shadow banning their accounts on which their livelihood depends.
Secondly, sex workers’ photos and videos are being fed into generative AI to create deepfakes, realistic videos and photos of sex workers in fake content. This is a new type of image based sexual abuse – the non-consensual distribution or threat of distribution of intimate images.
The third challenge is that as AI regulation is being developed, sex workers’ digital rights are often overlooked. Their unique dependence on digital platforms makes them more vulnerable to platform terms of service, use of AI systems and privacy and data protection processes. More needs to be done by online platforms to protect sex workers’ rights to privacy and safe working conditions.
The action
The European Sex Workers’ Rights Alliance (ESWA) is a sex worker-led network of more than 100 organisations across Europe and Central Asia.
In 2021, ESWA successfully advocated for sex workers’ digital rights in EU policies and regulations, including the Digital Services Act (DSA) and AI Act by centering sex worker voices and experiences from their network around online censorship and digital discrimination; the platformisation of sex work; privacy and data protection; and recommendations for tech platforms to reduce image based sexual abuse.
Further engagement with sex workers revealed that there is still very low awareness about the DSA, and many don’t trust its mechanisms to keep their identity private. This prompted ESWA to further educate their members about digital harms and digital rights. In collaboration with local sex workers’ organisations, ESWA held training sessions in London and Glasgow with 32 sex workers to prevent intimate image-based abuse, including deepfakes, addressing safety concerns experienced by the community.
They also produced a deck of Sex work and Tech Tarot cards to explain how sex workers can protect themselves from digital harms. For example, by encrypting data, using secure peer-to-peer payment platforms, using virtual private networks (VPN) for image sharing, and learning about legal rights. A second deck is being developed, focusing on labour rights, phantomisation of sex work, and AI tools.
As well as engaging their members, wider civil society and new funders, their advocacy work is helping them establish relationships with social media platforms to promote an online environment that respects the human rights of sex workers. In 2025, ESWA hosted a session at RightsCon ahead of their new report “Sex workers belong on social media”, presenting concrete strategies for increasing platform accountability under the EU Digital Services Act and beyond. Meta registered for the launch event. A month later, 44 organisations from ESWA wrote an open letter to Meta’s Oversight Board to end discriminatory practices – including shadow banning and discriminatory content moderation – against sex workers on its platforms, including Instagram, Facebook and WhatsApp.
How the European AI & Society Fund helped
Funding from the European AI & Society Fund over five years has enabled ESWA to build their credibility by capturing insight directly from people affected by AI harms and centering their lived experience in their digital rights recommendations. Now they are recognised as experts at the intersection of digital and sex workers’ rights.
Support from the European AI & Society Fund has also enabled ESWA to expand their reach, partnerships and awareness beyond their network. In 2024, ESWA organised Europe’s first in-person Digital Rights Convening for sex workers, member organisations, and allies. This groundbreaking event brought together 50 activists from diverse communities to coordinate efforts on critical digital rights issues impacting sex workers. This enabled ESWA to build a wider community, strengthening networks with the wider tech justice movement.