Forced labor and violent abuse are common in many industries eg [1][2]. That said, abuse in the sex industry is more widespread and horrible than I realized. Knowing what I know now I would've responded differently.
The four women I quoted are pointing out that workers prefer to have safer venues for doing business, more community connections, and better legal support for their business. To avoid cases of exploitation, improving social welfare is a good response.
Sex work by itself is neither liberating nor exploitative, just as any other domain of work isn't. That determination applies to the circumstance of the work, not the domain. Better policies can improve protections for sex workers and prevent coercive abuse as they have done in other industries.
The NSA's mandate concerns sigint, so that's what they do. Other entities (eg the PCLOB and federal courts) can constrain it, and the NSA constrains itself proactively to avoid embarrassments. The current result is a tradeoff between surveillance/security and privacy: NSA policy is that they can listen to foreign suspects' conversations, including if Americans are on the call. Metadata is collected on calls two "hops" from a suspect. Whether it's the right tradeoff is an interesting debate.
It wasn't supposed to be a gotcha. Coerced work is bad, especially so if the work is damaging to the worker. My point is that this isn't specific to sex work. Products produced by workers under wage slavery can be avoided using supply chain management, while promoting ethical labor practices that permit workers security and independence. A tradeoff exists between reducing risk of nonconsenting work while enabling consenting work.
Similarly, policies are available that can enable safe and consensual sex work. Supposedly "well intentioned" policies that reduce workers' social and financial support system are moves in the wrong direction: abuse is enabled by isolation and marginalization.
The article uses innuendo to suggest that nonconsensual videos were very popular on the platform and that its proposed policies will improve performers' conditions. These questions are not seriously examined, but the article is focused on sensational stories and big numbers while skipping context and consequences.
I don't equate sex to manual labor, they are of course different. But it won't do to reduce manual labor or disability care to "kicking a shovel into the dirt" either. Each of the physical occupations I listed plays a critical social role and involves the mind and body of its occupants in a unique and significant way. See Metaspencer's critique on this point, "what is a knowledge worker".[1]
Much of the criticism of normalizing sex work seems to be masking a motivation based in religious morality which considers sex shameful. I believe that adequately protected professionals can be successful in sex work, just as they can in other fields.
I don't think that distinction is useful on this question. Lots of non-sex physical work involves just being present, and lots of sex work involves skill.
Bodies are used commercially all the time, such as in manual labor, physical therapy, disability care, security, policing, military service, athletics, dancing, commercial modeling, ...
The problem that's particular to sex work is legal systems that fail to prevent coercion. This is exacerbated by religious advocacy groups that try to make sex work harder without making it safer.
I agree the perpetrators are to blame for violence and the poverty/abuse to blame for victims' inability to obtain redress. But the legal system has a role to play in ensuring noncoercion and empowering workers, which it's currently failing at.
That said, OP's claims on the concealed religious motivation and the negative effects of current sex work policies on consenting workers are essentially true.[1]
The president of the Adult Performance Artist Guild has written about the negative consequences of MasterCard's restrictive policies for performers ("I have received numerous reports of workers being removed and having no way to pay the bills because their income was taken away").[2]
Unfortunately sex work research shows that closing sites like Backpage does reduce the capabilities of sex workers: "the financial situation of the vast majority of research participants has deteriorated, as has their ability to access community and screen clients".[3]
Groups seeking to eliminate sex work often present misleading information and advocate policies that make sex work harder but not safer. There are policies that can improve safety and consent without harming consenting sex workers, but those policies need to be created with context and measurable consequences in mind, not sensationalism.
Controlling children's social environment to direct them into emotional dependence on corporate stimulation is really harmful. Unfortunately MasterCard doesn't seem to be working on that problem.
Consent is a real issue. The problem is advocates apply pressure to eliminate sex work even under clear consent, because safety isn't their actual goal. See OnlyFans, Craigslist for example.
Context and quantification are needed, not sensationalism.
Yes there are real accounts of abuse. The problem is that the policies adopted aren't actually directed at solving those problems with minimum harm to people involved; they are directed at eliminating sex work.
How many problems occur, what kind, what protocols would address the problems without needlessly harming performers and consumers?
A lot of the attacks against amateur porn and sex work are by religious groups masking their actual motive by focusing on consent verification. Verification raises the barrier and makes performers much more vulnerable since their legal identities are attached to their work.
I'd say the primary differences are that the CSAM scan is a perceptual hash rather than a regular file hash, and that the technical infrastructure of the CSAM system is designed from the ground up to be used against (rather than for) the user and report them individually to authorities for violation.
Without the technology deployed, Apple can (and did) say they don't have the ability to break into users' phones.
If Apple deploys on-phone scanning, governments can just tell Apple to support a new list. It won't be the NCMEC CSAM list. It will be a "public safety and security" list. I wouldn't rule out underhandedness either. [1]
[1] https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/jessicagarrison/the-new...
[2] https://www.ilo.org/global/topics/forced-labour/policy-areas...