Taylor Lorenz’s Power User - Why The Internet Is Broken

Episode Date: February 23, 2026

FOSTA/SESTA shows what happens when you "reform" and chip away at Section 230.Welcome back to my Section 230 mini-series, where I break down the most important and misunderstood law about the internet!!Support my independent journalism:🙏 Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/cw/taylorlorenz   🗞️ Substack: https://www.usermag.co    FOSTA-SESTA was the first major amendment and carve-out to Section 230. While the law claimed to be about "cracking down on big tech" and making the internet "safer for children," the result was the mass deplatforming of sex workers and marginalized people online.Activist and adult industry content creator Siri Dahl joins me to discuss how FOSTA-SESTA forced sex workers into incredibly unsafe environments and increased censorship across the board. We dive into the shutdown of Backpage, Tumblr banning all adult content, and how organizations like Morality in Media are pushing a moral panic that lawmakers (and the left!!) have bought into. We also cover how Big Tech has backed these Section 230 "reform" efforts. If we don't understand the devastating effects of FOSTA-SESTA, we are doomed to repeat them with new bills like the Sunset Section 230 Act or Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA). We must protect Section 230 at all costs! Follow me:https://www.instagram.com/taylorlorenz      https://www.instagram.com/taylorlorenz3.0     https://www.tiktok.com/@taylorlorenz https://bsky.app/profile/taylorlorenz.bsky.social  https://twitter.com/taylorlorenz 

Like, I follow artists who do illustration work where there might be like a topless woman in an illustration. And now they're getting their accounts deleted because Instagram is saying, oh, no, you can't post that. That's going to enable sex trafficking. Welcome back to my Section 230 miniseries where I'm breaking down the most important and the most misunderstood law about the internet. Today, we are going to be talking about Fasta Sesta. Now, it's important to understand that Fasta Sesta was a law that passed in 2018 and it was the first major amendment and carve out to Section 230 protections. It was a landmark moment and the passage of Fasta Sesta essentially opened the door to a lot of these censorship and surveillance laws that we're seeing today. I think Fasta Sesta is such a good example of what happens when you try to amend or reform Section 230, especially to protect people online.

The law was essentially about removing sex trafficking content from the internet and making it safer for children. The actual result was the nasty platforming of sex workers and marginalized people online. In the first full year of Fasta Sesta going into effect, over 72% of sex workers reported. increased financial insecurity. 39% reported an increase in violence from clients after the law passed. Fasta Sesta led to a 54% increase in pressure from clients to provide services outside of sex workers' boundaries. 40% reported increased coercion or force used.

And 37% reported increased fraud. Again, this is all just in the first year after Fasta Sesta passed. Fasta Sesta also forced a lot of sex workers into incredibly unsafe environments. 11% of sex workers who were previously working online turned to the street to do sex work after Fasta Sesta passed. That number is even higher for members of vulnerable subgroups, including 24% who entered as minors and 21% of sex workers with disabilities. 10% of all sex workers reported homelessness due to Fasta Sesta. And additional respondents reported unstable housing. Rather than protecting vulnerable people, Fasta led to more sex trafficking and to this day continues to endanger those it claimed to save.

Aside from all of the devastating effects it had on sex workers, it also fundamentally changed the internet. Censorship increased across the board after Fasta Sesta passed. Instagram and Facebook began Mastey platforming thousands of LGBTQ people, abortion activists, and anyone posting anything that could broadly be classified as sexual content. Just months after Fasta Sessa Pass, Tumblr banned all adult content, effectively destroying the platform. But how did this devastating law come to pass? and why was it such an important legal and political turning point in the fight to dismantle Section 230? A lot of people don't even realize that the law was the first major amendment to Section 230,

and it was all done in the name of protecting kids online. Siri Dahl is a phenomenal activist, content creator, and has worked for years in the adult industry. Today, she's joining me to break down how Fasta Sesta came to fruition, what the law ultimately did, and how it forever transformed the Internet for us all. Siri, thank you so much for joining me today. Thank you for having me, Taylor. I'm very happy to be here for this conversation. I had to have you on because you have been one of the most consistent voices on all of this stuff. And I think you do such a great job of kind of breaking down like why these things matter and specifically like the timeline of all of these events.

So much of Fostas Sesta centered around this website backpage.com. Can you explain back page and its history? I mean, I would say similar to the idea of like a Craigslist. Like it was an online classifieds page. with a lot of categories, but what it became most known for over time was essentially running ads for independent escorts. So you could, you know, if you're an independent sex worker, and I'm sure there were like some agencies, escort agencies that would run ads as well. But it was the bulk of it usually was just independent sex workers who would use it to advertise by, you know, making a post about their location or, you know, whatever. So it became pretty well known for that and that also made it a really big target because,

because there were instances of someone involved in like a sex trafficking scheme that would place an ad for a person who's being trafficked on Backpage. But the thing was the owners of Backpage, when a post like that would come up, they would cooperate with law enforcement to find the person who made the post. So it actually functioned as a kind of a good net to catch traffickers in. Then that changed because of Fostasusta. One thing that's so interesting to me about Backpage is that it is such a relic of like the Internet 1.0. This is a website that was founded in 2004. There was no algorithms. This was not like pushing, you know, sexy ladies onto you and onto your feeds and like

entrapping anyone, you know, through sort of like addictive methods or whatever. This was like a very early Craigslist style kind of like classified section, ultimately owned by the village voice, which was a news outlet that was very popular in New York sort of at that time and was really early to the web. I think it really got traction after Craigslist shut down their. personal section around 2010. The internet was sort of cleaning up. This is the year that Instagram launched, Pinterest launched a year later. Like everyone's getting online on social media. And you started to see this like bifurcation, I feel like of like the sexualized internet with like

mainstream social media internet. And I feel like a lot of the like sort of sexualized Craigslist stuff kind of ended up on back page. And so back page is where a lot of it was happening. I think most of the stuff that was on there was certainly not sex trafficking. Like again, this is part of the village voice. Like, I can't stress that enough. It was sort of so banal. Like, I think now the platform is so affiliated with sex, but people were selling their cars on here. They were like, you know, swapping office furniture. Like, it was a lot of like normal stuff. Yeah, it was. Like the kind of stuff that you'd maybe see now on Facebook marketplace, you know, but yeah, it did have, especially, I think you hit the nail on the head with like it became more popular for the more sexual stuff

after Craigslist got rid of their personal's section, which was a very sad time in my life. I never used the personal section, but I really enjoyed reading them when I was like in early college. I loved reading them. My friends and I would place them for people, like, as jokes in college,

we would be like so-and-so looking for so-and-so in Boulder or whatever. Like, I mean, the internet at this time was very, like, emergent and small. And obviously, there was always this sort of panic since the 90s about sort of sex on the internet. That's how we got the Communications Decency Act in, you know, in the first place, which was this landmark law that was significantly like overturned.

But Section 230 is actually part of the Communications Decency Act, but it was this effort to like clean up the internet, you know, in the 90s. But yeah, I mean, I would say by the early 2010s, like, Backpage had become like another, like, it was a Craigslist competitor, but it was also mostly known for this type of content. And this is when it really starts to like, I think, get the ire of people in power. And I want to talk about like, who, you know, who are some of the, original like back page ops, I guess, like coming for them. At the time that this was actively happening, probably and cozy is probably involved.

Because they're always the culprit in these things. Yes, they're always at the scene of the crime. I know you don't have to guess. I was like a baby reporter just out of college, but I was covering the internet. And I remember this fight happening because there was a lot of questions about like, kind of how the internet would go. And you started to see these groups actually getting a lot of traction in the media, where they would start to send out these press releases.

Like, everyone was interested in social media and the internet. And in Cozy was really vocal about like, the internet is bad and look at these bad things. Yeah, the National Center on Sexual Exploitation, which to me, it's pretty clear that I think they intentionally, because they used to be called morality and media. Which, by the way, like, is an insane name and should tell you everything you need to know about this organization.

It's an organization that, you know, as a nonprofit, they claim that they don't have any, like, religious ties, But, I mean, come on, we can all see. Like, they do have ties to, like, Christian fundamentalist organizations and individuals. But yeah, they were formerly known as Morality and Media. Then they rebranded at some point to Enkose National Center on Sexual Exploitation and got a new logo, which both kind of weirdly echo an actual, like, reputable organization, Nick Mick, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.

And I think that that was an intentional choice in their rebrand to hopefully the public might conflate and cozy with the more reputable, nonpartisan, apolitical organization, Nick Mick. Yeah, I feel like they're like the warrior version of Nick Mick. I think to a lot of reporters, especially tech reporters at the time, like, there was so much optimism about the internet. And they were really kind of early to be like, the internet is actually secretly bad. And here's why. And I hate that they were able to rebrand because I think if you're sending a pitch from morality and media, a lot of, like, journalists in New York,

like, millennials are not going to take it seriously, but if you're sending it through Encozy, they're able to sort of get attention and they're able to get these meetings with lawmakers. So they start meeting with lawmakers. They start doing this push in the press. They and these other religious fundamentalist groups, who, by the way, are like super anti-LGBQ,

like Encozy considers, like, the Super Bowl porn, you know? Sports Illustrated swimsuit edition, porn. Cosmo Magazine, porn. Exactly. And I think it was like the leader of their board. Some other person on their board is like a huge proponent of conversion therapy. Like these are hardcore religious fundamentalists. But they're able to sort of like get credibility because they're like cracking down on big tech and cracking down on the tech industries like evil predatory, you know, ways that they're getting people into sex trafficking. So them and other groups like them start also meeting with attorney generals in different states and get them to open up investigations into back page to attorney generals. specifically really pursue and try to, you know, prosecute backpage for the alleged sex trafficking that's happening on there. Again, some amount of bad stuff was undeniably happening. This was a very early version of the internet that was not policed. These platforms were not as responsible as they should have been.

But I think it's notable who one of those attorney generals was. Maybe a former presidential candidate? Yeah. It was Kamala Harris. I knew this. I feel like a lot of people don't know that she had a hand in taking down backpage and and changing. the internet for the worse. Yeah.

I mean, she's always been really on board with these, like, censorship and surveillance laws. And actually a lot of other Democrats were quick to get on board, too. This is all happening really, like 2014, 2015, 2016, 2016, the election happens. That is the beginning of what's known as the tech lash. Basically, the optimism of the Obama years fades. Everybody's like, wait. And the media really centers on this one narrative that, like, it was Facebook that put

Donald Trump in office, the internet is bad and we need to censor it. It's like, yeah, I mean, I actually do also agree that Facebook probably had a very large hand in creating and spreading propaganda that resulted in Donald Trump getting elected in 2016. But widespread censorship is not a great way to deal with that. To me, it's like obviously counterintuitive, like, that makes no sense. But as we now know, to many Americans, they have had zero concerns or questions about that, apparently. It's so notable too, but part of

of the reason that that foster system was able to pass is because of Cheryl Sandberg and Facebook's vocal support for the laws. I mean, I think a lot of people think like, oh, these laws are bad for Facebook, especially as these tech conglomerates have gotten bigger and we'll talk about this later. Like censoring users doesn't actually crack down on their business model and in a lot of ways actually allows them to harvest even more data on users. So that's just kind of like a piece of it. It's like this whole so much of this was driven by like anti Facebook sentiment and getting liberals on board with it through these anti Facebook sentiment. And it's

It's like, okay, you're literally backing a policy that Facebook is openly pushing. It's so infuriating because these censorship laws, these internet censorship laws are still being sold to us as cracking down on big tech. And it literally is doing the opposite. Like big tech likes these laws. Yeah, well, it'll, they allow them to consolidate power, you know. I think like we were seeing the beginning of the moral panic happen around technology. Again, in the early days of the 2000s and even the early 2010s, people were like, oh, it's so

exciting. I can't wait to download a new app. And already by 2015, you have this narrative about tech addiction starting to form. You're starting to see a lot of headlines about like this celebrity, you know, quit the internet and they're so happy or, you know, just these narratives that it's bad. Tristan Harris founds the Center for Humane Technology, which has played a role in this stuff. And you start to kind of see this like reactionary movement really gain foothold with liberals. This results in liberal and conservative lawmakers investigating backpage. A subcommittee in the Senate launches an investigation, and then, you know, they start sort of investigating it in the House as well.

So we have Congress investigating back page. We have these groups like morality and media and cozy, you know, gaining more momentum in the press. We also have the mainstream media starting to push this narrative about like technology bad. It's addicting. it's leading to disinformation. This is the beginning of the, like, I would call it at this point,

a moral panic about disinformation. I feel like after Donald Trump was elected, like somebody, they just wanted a scalp. Like, they just wanted to regulate the internet in some way because they were like, wait, internet bad,

we need some sort of regulation. And that's when Congress and the House come together to say, like, we have regulation that's going to, you know, make the internet safer. It's called Fasta Sesta, which are actually two separate laws.

Can you tell me what the acronyms are? because I always forget them. Yes, Fasta is Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act and Sesta is stop enabling sex trafficking act. Again, like were these bad actors, sure? But I think one thing to note is that like Fasta, it's like they're making, you know, these dual bills are making their way through the House and the Senate. In April 2018, the government seizes Backpage. So Backpage is shut down.

You would think like, okay, well, this was like kind of the main crux of everything. Like it was all supposed to be about Backpage. Okay, Backpage is shut down. Maybe we don't need these laws to be as aggressive. But it didn't matter. They passed it anyway. And it was this like overwhelming thing. I think only two senators voted against it.

The same two that I always talk about on this program, but Ron Wyden and Rand Paul. Because they're the only ones like Rand Paul's libertarian and just doesn't want any oversight. And Ron Wyden's like the only senator that like understands the internet. And he's one of the original authors of Section 230. As someone who lived in Kentucky for 10 years, I really hate to give Rand Paul credit for anything at any point. But I'm like, well, on that one. Sometimes libertarians, libertarians are like on the right side of certain issues, like policing or sex work sometimes. And then it's like healthcare. I don't want to know their thoughts on other things.

But it was this pivotal moment because at the time, liberal media kind of went along with this. Like, I mean, there was like a little bit of, of, you know, discussion about like, hey, this might totally change the internet. I remember like there was this Vox.com video that was popular that was like, hey, this is like, basically this law is like the first major attack on section 230 ever. and that might end up having some really bad consequences, but everyone was like, oh, well, these tech companies deserve it. And also, it's like, when the bills that got passed are, you know, stop sex trafficking. They name it that way, even though that's not functioning what it's going to actually accomplish. In fact, in many cases, kind of does the opposite.

It creates more risk, creates more danger. But they're clever with the strategy because it's like, now you look like an absolute insane person if you stand up and say, I oppose the Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act. even though there were plenty of reasons to oppose it. I think what was so insidious to me when I was covering this stuff, too, is just witnessing the wild coalition that they were able to get, again, just seeming like they were tough on tech in some way.

Because you had the MAGA base, which I think also people have to remember, I mean, this was like early QAnon where there was this idea that, like, their sex traffickers all in the government. Like, Epstein was charged around this time, like, which ultimately MAGA didn't end up caring about. it seems like, but like there was this idea online among the far right that like sex traffickers were all over and they were enticing your children into, you know, being exploited. You also had the rise of true crime content really coming up. And this is the era of like a lot more

like authoritarian stuff starting to make its way into like the content creator universe. And like I think even some of the content creators that were big YouTubers at the time were feeding a lot of these narratives. On the liberal side, you did have some liberal liberals and some content creators being like, hey, by the way, this is going to be a really bad idea. Phil DeFranco spoke out about it. There was a few others that were speaking out. But a lot of like mainstream Democrats felt like, hey, we need to attack Section 230 because these tech companies don't deserve quote unquote protection. That's not even really how Section 230 works. And like this amendment, I mean, Fostis S is technically an amendment to Section 230. Like this amendment,

this carve out is going to be the little wedge that we need in the door to, crack down on online speech, which is something liberals wanted throughout the entire first Trump presidency. This is all they wanted. And I worked at the Atlantic at the time. I worked at the New York Times. It was like every day it was like Facebook needs to censor more. We need to crack down on misinformation. We need to crack down and protect the children. Everyone, all the kids are getting bullied, like making them depraise. Like it was the, yeah, it was this moral panic that is now become mainstream. Yeah, very much. And just intensified over the years. Like I mentioned a second ago that I lived in Kentucky for 10 years. So I was living in Kentucky.

at the time because I've been in the adult industry for 14 years, started my career in 2012, but from 2015 to 2020, I was retired. I was like out of the industry working a civilian job. So I was not publicly engaged in the adult industry in any way. I would still keep tabs on what was going on, so I was aware of Fossa Sesta when it was being introduced, when it was passed. But since I at that time was not maintaining a presence online as a sex worker or a performer, I didn't have an immediate sense of how it changed things once it went into effect. When I came out of retirement in 2020 and had the experience of like restarting my, you know, Instagram account, all my, like, social media pages,

I immediately noticed the drastic difference because, you know, I'd had the experience of having an Instagram, Twitter account, all these things for like three years between 2012, 2015. and the the difference on my end as as a, you know, an online, like, personality and the kinds of content that I share, like, was night and day. Like, the censorship was so, so heavy-handed post-Fosta Sesta. So I only have a platform because I got popular on Tumblr in the early 2010s, which is a wild way to get into journalism. But I was, like, a Tumblr girly. And I, by 2018, I wasn't spending a ton of time on Tumblr, but, like, Coming from Tumblr and still having like my blogs there and having like a network there, I would always like check in.

And this was such a big moment as well because December 2018 is also when Tumblr banned. And that was a huge moment for the internet because it sort of set the stage. And I think Fasta Sesto sort of pushed this like even though Fossa Sesto was ultimately about like shutting down back page and it had immediately devastating effects on the internet. Like all of these other websites got shut down. There was immediate harm to like the second. worker community, it also started to spread out to the broader social web where you just had these platforms not willing to have any liability. And it kind of gave the platforms also licensed to crack down on quote unquote adult content because this moral panic had effectively taken hold

and you were seeing these articles in places like the Atlantic, right, of like children are seeing inappropriate content on Instagram and they might see a nipple or something or a sexual woman and that's going to, you know, make them trans or something like. But it had very like immediate effects across the whole internet. Sex workers were hit the hardest. Like you were saying, it was this sort of night and day. But can you explain what the immediate effects were and kind of like what communities went away right away?

And how did that put a lot more people in danger? So the immediate effects were any site that is like user generated content or like a site like Reddit, for example, anything that allows users to post or, you know, share their own content that they've created. pretty much immediately in order to avoid potential liability due to Fasta Sesta started cracking down on any kind of speech or information sharing that could be construed in a legal context as, quote-unquote, enabling sex trafficking, the way that Fosta and Sesta sort of defined that, which was so vaguely defined in the way that the laws were written, that it resulted in, like, you know, like sex educators

all of a sudden are having their pages taken down or their post deleted. Because any frank discussion of sexuality, sex acts, even if it's for educational purposes, could be construed under Fostasesta as enabling sex trafficking or encouraging, like, commercial sex activity. Abortion activists as well, like reproductive, people in the reproductive health space were immediately censored off of this, LGBTQ people.

Anyone really just, as you mentioned, and trying to talk about sexuality. Because a lot of this censorship was also being done by automated systems, this is before these platforms even leaned fully into AI, you just had them banning absurd amounts of content. This is when I lost one of my Instagram accounts, RIP, one of several, that ultimately got banned for violating community guidelines, which is crazy, but anybody that was like speaking about news,

or, you know, this is also when conversations around revenge porn were started to happen. And porn is part of our world, right? Like, we want to talk about sexuality and talk these things and like suddenly on so many spaces in the internet you couldn't. The Electronic Frontier Foundation did a bunch of coverage at the time and they found that a lot of designers with design patterns were just getting their content removed. This one woman had a vast amount of content from Tumblr removed after actually they

had removed their adult content including a heart-shaped necklace. These are just images of a tire, image of an hanger, images of a flamingo floaty shoes, pillows of all sorts, a boot scrubbing, you know mechanism, LED jeans, troll socks, it goes on and on and on. So these automated systems from the jump were not working correctly. And there was no acknowledgement of that or any acknowledgement of the fact that they had just pushed all of these sex workers into like much less safe spaces. Yeah, precisely. Because I mean, especially for anyone who was using in-person sex workers who like place ads online or work with an agency, like all of a sudden that stuff had to become much more like

locked down to, you know, hopefully avoid liability through Fostasesta. And honestly, it's like, I wish that everyone was like in favor of decriminalizing sex work in all of its forms. I believe in that movement, but at the same time, I will say, like, anyone who doesn't, who has struggles with that, this is still doing harm, like passing laws like this that cause sex workers to have to go to extreme lengths because it's like, just because I can't run an ad in a personal section or on like back page or something, just because I can't post openly on like Twitter about my job doesn't mean that I'm going to stop doing it. It just means that now I'm going to have to go find clients in a far riskier way.

And it's going to be harder for me to do my due diligence of like background checking them and vetting them before meeting them. So it put a lot more sex workers directly in harm's way. And then obviously like, you know, had really negatively impacted the livelihoods of many other people, like just creatives. Like I follow artists who do illustration work where there might be like a topless woman in illustration and now they can't, like they're getting their accounts deleted because Instagram is saying, oh no, you can't post that.

That's going to enable sex trafficking. Yeah. And of course, like, I mean, ultimately we have the data now to know that this actually exacerbated sex trafficking. It made it easier for sex traffickers to prey on people, on vulnerable people. And it also shoves. people into even less regulated spaces that are, you know, websites run abroad, et cetera, that are significantly less moderated. And just because they were not on like the media or Congress's

kind of radar, they're effectively still continuing and some of them are not even abiding by any laws. I think also people need to really understand what sex work is. Like when we talk about sex work and this moral panic about so much of it, like it's a lot broader than you would think. Like if you were spending time in these places, like I think people think of sex work is just like prostitution. you know, like you're getting paid to go have sex with some random, you know, person and some man and blah, blah, blah. And that's not even what a lot of it was. Like, a lot of it was like companionship type, you know, experiences, fetish experiences. I just want people to understand that.

Like, there was actually a wide range of services being offered even within the like sexualized content on these sites and the sort of personal side of, you know, back page or Craigslist previously. There's a form of sex work that exists. and, you know, in all different combinations of, like, gender identities is someone who has a fetish for, like, very muscular people. You know, I have friends who do that, like, a form of sex work where they're not actually exchanging any body fluids. They're not actually having a, like, sexual contact with the client. But it is, like, a private, you know, meeting situation where they're maybe wrestling the client, which, like, maybe in a slightly erotic way. but it's like they're not actually having sex. There's not money even being exchanged for like actual sexual intercourse.

They're being paid to like, you know, wear a sexy outfit and like wrestle this person. I also know people who do a form of sex work where they just are hired by a client who wants to like do muscle worship. And that is, that's still sex work. Sex work doesn't mean that you're physically actually having sex. And of course, for someone like me, I'm a performer. I work in mainstream studio productions in adult film and I make my own content. You know, I have an account on.

on pretty much all of the adult like content platforms, clip stores and stuff. And I actually, at this point, it's actually fairly rare that I actually have sex with other people. Like a lot of what I do is like solo and like interaction with fans, like custom videos. It's still all sex work, but like what it looks like for me can be different day to day, depending on my schedule and opportunities. So it's definitely a very significant misunderstanding to assume that when we say sex work, we mean a transactional exchange of money for one-on-one-one sense. with that individual that you're giving the money to.

That's one of the ways it can look, but there's a lot of other possibilities as well. Yeah. And I think, like, increasingly those other sort of possibilities are being either stigmatized or written off. And it is this, like, very regressive view of what sex work is that's presented when people are talking about it in Congress or in the mainstream media. It is really just money for sex.

And they say, like, this is how, you know, and any woman involved in that specific, because they often focus on women is inherently victimized or it's problematic for that reason. And it's bad. Like, yeah, this all, this all basically was really bad. There was some outrage. Like, there were people sounding the alarm. I don't want to act like it went through, you know, with only boosterism. I don't think enough people really were able to zoom out and realize the like years-long legal campaign that this was setting the stage for.

And I think they fundamentally did buy into this moral panic. And they were just like, oh, that's so sad that happened to sex workers. Yeah. Yeah. Too bad for that. Yeah, the attitude, now that it's, you know, been almost a decade since the law went into effect, it's like the attitude that I encounter more often than not from folks who are outside of sex work as an industry or like have never done it themselves or maybe

don't directly, like, intimately know people who have been involved in sex work. But the response that I see the most often really is like, well, you know, but isn't it still a net good, which really does belie like the lack of awareness and critical thinking behind, which also enables these laws to get passed and be written very poorly with very little criticism. I think that the media was so composed. Like, if it were up to me, we would put these people on trial. Like, Kamal Harris would be a put on trial, like Richard Blumenthal.

Let me tell you, Richard Blumenthal is also always at the scene of the crime. Like, these are the same lawmakers that went on to push the Kids Online Safety Act that are pushing Section 230 repeal today. Like, they know what they're doing. They understood Sesta Fasta as this, like, first effective, like, chip away at this foundational internet law, which is Section 230. And I think, like, so much of it got lost. I was looking back at the Sesta Fasta coverage today.

Most of the articles don't even mention Section 230. Like, they don't talk about why this law was ultimately, like, what it really was, that it's this amendment to Section 230. And here's the broader legal campaign. And so there was no, it's like everybody just kind of moved on. COVID hit two years later. Things got crazy. Everyone got very online.

And before you know it, we have them taking the next step. Nicosie is back out in public, like, you know, pushing kids online safety. And I think COVID also opened the door, even though, you know, in the early days of the pandemic during lockdown era, when a lot of kids, schools remote, actually suicides went down among children. We actually saw that like a lot of these claims being made about being like super online where like never came to fruition. But the moral panic that ensued after, specifically pushed by people like Joe Biden as well, who sought to remove anonymity from the internet, like, I think just like

people never questioned it. You know, they just sort of bought into it so quickly. You know, one thing that, that I was thinking about as you were describing that, that process is like the adult industry as a whole, you know, I say like industry, but when I say that I mean anyone who makes any amount of income from doing on specifically in this case because we are talking about like bills that are like internet bills that affect section 230 but anyone who's doing like any kind of online sex work or adjacent to sex work online which can include people who are just like you know famous on instagram and maybe they never actually do anything that's pornographic or explicit but they just have an only fan's account and they might only ever post like photos of them in a bikini

on their instagram account but that's still seen as sex work because it's on only fans, and that's kind of universally how people have started to interpret that. But the number of creators that I've just like flooded into under the umbrella of like the adult industry online, using online platforms who are unaware of, oh, why can't I post this kind of content? Why does my Instagram account get deleted? You know, why is my TikTok getting deleted over and over again? And it's like, it's because of Fasta Sesta. That's what's being wielded against us.

And the difference is if like specifically, I mean, most people who are content creators who have ever had an only fans are aware. Literally, it's like, unless you are Cardi B or whoever, like, you cannot have an Instagram profile and have your link in bio be in onlyfans.com slash, like, username. Your account will get deleted. Immediately. Again, all in the name of kids' online safety. And I think what's so insidious, too, is just the way that we saw with this like very

loosey-goosey definition of sex trafficking, we're seeing this like the same thing about children. I mean, like, we're listening to these groups who, when, you know, they say like, oh, children shouldn't be able to see porn. And it's like, okay, well, what do you mean by porn? And again, they're talking about a catalog. They're talking about a trans person. Literally just a trans person existing visibly on the internet. A hundred percent. I really do think COVID played a role in some of this denialism. Like, number one, because like that entire year of 2020 was full of so much chaos that like, I don't think by the time, you know, Fasta Sesta went to effect, really 2018, but 2019 is like the first year we saw the effects. Like, I don't

don't think we ever took time to like truly do much of a retrospective aside from like the advocacy orgs that are putting stuff out but like as a culture like we never were like wait a minute this was devastating and because so many people associate 2020 with being hyper online when joe biden came into office in 2021 and just arbitrarily was like actually covid disappeared magically overnight everybody get back to work like i think a lot of people have trauma from that time and they sort of like conflate the trauma that they have or the negative experiences that they had in 2020 with, like, being online too much. And so they're, like, very supportive of these laws that claim to, like, make people less online or censor the internet in certain ways. I don't know. I feel like there's some sort of complex behind all of it.

It does definitely feel like that. It feels like the era of everyone being hyper online in 2020 was, like, a fever dream that many folks in power would, like, like us all to just completely forget. And, you know, attacking Section 230 is just one tool in the toolbox. A very, very, very strong tool in the toolbox to achieve that end. Well, I also think it's notable that all of these major movements, including Black Lives Matter, etc., the Me Too movement, happened because of the Internet. And increasingly, you saw the Internet really under Joe Biden and, you know, we started to see this Gaza. Basically, people left us leveraging the Internet to mobilize against power. We saw that with 2020.

That's led to Trump's original. plan to ban TikTok was because leftists were organizing. By the first year of Joe Biden's presidency, he had banned climate activists from White House groups. He had banned all of these sorts of content creators basically from any White House events because they were speaking out and pushing progressive policies. And then, of course, Joe Biden pushed the TikTok ban and passed the TikTok ban. And you know who wasn't banning independent journalists and content creators from their press functions is Republicans in MAGA? Because they have really nurtured their ecosystem. of independent media, to their benefit, unfortunately.

Well, tech policy has always been so intertwined with Republican politics. Like, I mean, this is what I was trying to say, like, the other day on Twitter, I was tweeting just like, no big leftist content creators have taken up this cause. In fact, several big leftist content creators have fed this exact moral panic and continue to push this rhetoric about, like, phones bad, internet bad. And leftists get so mad at me for fighting against it. But it's like, no, I'm sorry. We have to fight against that moral panic because that is the moral panic that all these laws are

predicated on. So you can't feed the moral panic and then fight these laws. But like, I just think that a lot of them don't pay attention to tech policy. And tech policy seems kind of scary or confusing. Whereas on the right, I mean, half of Project 2025 is tech policy. Like they are enacting techno fascism. Like they have seized control of like almost all of our online platforms. And they've done that through really focusing on section 230 to the point that you have like random MAGA accounts like, you know, talking about this. Whereas on the left, they're like, what's foster sesta again? Oh, that was like that bad thing that happened one time to sex workers, who cares? And it's like, no, no, no, no, no, no. Yeah. Well, the right, I mean, the rights has been so organized, so well organized in their reactionary movement for decades. And I don't really, I'm not a fan of many Democrat politicians. My values are far more progressive than the majority of them. But that being said, like, it is rare to see any sort of meaningful agreement on tech policy coming from the left. And when we do see any kind of it's usually in the worst case example where I'm like, no, don't agree on that one. Like, it's something like a foster sesta.

Yeah, I think the left has no proactive tech policy. Aside from Ron Wyden, there is no proactive tech policy. It is only siding with Republicans on mass censorship and surveillance bills that will cement a right-wing authoritarian power of the internet forever, by the way. I mean, it's like the TikTok thing. These Democrats got so mad. Like, I covered the TikTok ban extensively. And everyone was like, hey, by the way, this is going to end up in Larry Ellison's

control. This is a bad thing. The Democrats should stop doing this because let's not forget it was the Democrats Warner, Mark Warner, Richard Blumenthal, like all these people, you know, that really pushed it. Joe Biden, you know, directly signed, not only signed the law, defended the law in court into the Supreme Court enacted the law when he didn't have to. Exactly what everyone said what happened happened. It ended up under control of far right pro-Trump billionaires. And now we can't talk about Palestine on there anymore. And it's just like, same thing with Fostasesta. It's like all of these groups spoke out. Now we've been deplatform. Now. Now. you've endangered more children, you know, in sex trafficking.

And there's no recourse. And I think people on the left just kind of ignore it because they're like, well, phones are bad. The internet's bad. These tech companies are bad. But it's like these laws don't actually hurt the tech companies. Do you think Facebook's business has gotten smaller since Sesta Fasta? So the way that this backfires, that just creates more fuel to add to the fire of like internet panic, moral panic stuff is take for example, you know, there's so much hate right now for

for Thirst Trapp OnlyFans Girl kind of content. Someone like a Bonnie Blue, you know, who has millions of followers on their platforms online on Instagram and TikTok. Like they'll post a TikToker reel that like really just rides the line of what's going to go against guidelines, but it doesn't cross that line. So technically it's appropriate to the platform. Like, they could still get deleted at any time because Instagram just loves to do that. It's like whatever.

But they're riding that line. Essentially, it's like when you have censorship like Fausta Sesta that leads to a chilling of speech. You're creating an environment where people who, whether you like it or not, are doing adult content online for adult consumption. And they're not selling you that because they can't sell you that on Instagram or TikTok. The goal is to draw the eye to the profile, hoping that you'll convert into sales when someone then goes to your only fans or whatever. There's so much competition in that. The market is pretty flooded with, like, you know, adult content creators. Fosta Sesta has actually created a breeding ground for this overt towing the line kind of thirst trap content

because most of us wouldn't need to go that far to get people's attention if we weren't so heavily suppressed due to Fosta Sesta. Like if you just let us exist on the platform and like acknowledge like, yeah, I work in the legal porn business and just let me say that. Like I'm still going to obey the content guidelines. I'm not going to post explicit. I'm not going to post nudity. I can't do that. That's against the rules. And I understand that, and I'm not trying to break the rules.

But when you apply the censorship unevenly and sporadically, and you let some celebrities get away with posting basically topless photos, but you don't let sex workers even acknowledge their job, which is, you know, legal in the case of like, you know, if you're making content and stuff, it is creating the breeding ground for these like weird sort of borderline scammy marketing tactics that a lot of content creators use that now is just being turned back around, and used as fuel to say, well, we need to ban porn now, essentially. Exactly.

I think you make such a good point here, which is like this law ironically made our social media feeds full of more kind of like click baity. Like you mentioned kind of scammy like types of content because that is what they have to do because they can't just openly have an only fan's link. You know what I mean? Like it would be so simple, but it's not. So you have to do this stuff. And then you see this moral panic about like the bop house or whatever because it's like, well, they're being so sexual or not to. you know, make them that sort of the face of anything. But it's more just like, I think that a lot of people have this like reactive, bad view.

And, and also just this very moralistic view around children and that children should never be exposed to content that I think is bad. You know, it's, it's all just kind of bleak. But I want like leftists to like wake up and sort of start understanding these nuances are not just left as liberals, really anyone. Honestly, you could be on the right. You can be any person just instead of getting outraged about like this content that we're seeing or. or like sort of looking at the downstream effects of this broken social media like landscape that we're looking at now. Because a lot of leftists are like, well, big tech bad because of algorithmic feeds or because of XYZ. Like there are laws that we could proactively pass to tamp down on all of that.

But section 230 doesn't do that. And just back to Facebook, like I think what Mike Maznick wrote at the time, you know, back in 2018, when Fasta Sesta passed and TechDirt always does like the best coverage of these laws, he wrote one of the main reasons Fostasesta is law right now is because of Facebook. Facebook's vocal support for the bill. Cheryl Sandberg repeatedly spoke out in favor of the bill, misrepresenting what the bill actually did. And then he talks about like this post-mortem that they did that realized like the effects. And I hate the thing of like, if only you listen to sex workers. If only you listen to trans people.

Like a lot of people don't want to listen to stuff until that affects them. But like this has affected the internet that you are on. And it probably like as you just said, Siri, which I think your point was so good. Like probably part of the reason that you hate the internet right now, is because of laws like Fasta Sesta, and more of them is not going to make it better. No, it's going to make it worse. And also it's like it leans toward a majority of all politicians supporting these kinds of laws. Like more often than not, they pass with bipartisan support when it comes to like ID verification

in, you know, 25 states in the country. Foster Sesta had a lot of bipartisan support. And we see it over and over again. I think that, you know, on the, at least on the left, it's like this, they just probably see this as an easy win. because so much of politics now is just about the optics of things. And it's like you can you can put on your website when you run for election next. Like, yeah, I voted yes for the Stop Sex Trafficking Act. Yeah, but it's an easy win because no one on the left is paying attention or covering tech policy.

And that just sort of brings me back to my original point. Like, it's great that, you know, Phil DeFranco made that one video back in, you know, 2019 or 18 or whatever. But like, they don't cover it now. They're not covering it now. Tech policy is a regular point of discussion among right-wing content creators, among right-wing podcasters, among far-right figures and politicians. They are constantly talking. Which is wild when you consider that, like, most of why they got into it is because they're

like, we're being canceled. But that was really effective. Because in a lot of cases, and I hate to say it, I'm sorry, but in a lot of cases, they were, like, they were right. They were sort of being arbitrarily banned in an unfair way without transparency. Now, do I agree that all of them? them, you know, deserve a platform online. No, a lot of them are really bad actors.

But instead of leftists being like, you're right, that's also happening to sex workers. That's why we need transparency laws. That's why we need privacy laws. That's why we need data portability and all of this stuff, interoperability standards for social networks. Like they were like, you guys are so late. You're not being censored. You should be censored.

Yeah, exactly. That is the response. It's like the left is looking at the far right back in, you know, 2018 and going, oh, this person got kicked off Twitter for saying. like, you know, something pro-Nazi. Awesome. And meanwhile, the right is rallying around that person, supporting that person, and gaining more and more traction

to fight big tech and fight against censorship on tech platforms. Of course, even when they say that, they really mean, like, censorship against them. Let's be clear. They're not fighting against censorship. Like, the problem is, is that the far right also wants authoritarianism. They just want authoritarianism over right-wing speech. So, like, I think the left and the right,

Like Democrats and Republican are just two sides of the same coin. They both want censorship. Now, the far right was very effectively able to push forward this narrative censorship. And I do think that they correctly identified a lot of problems with the way that like censorship works online. The problem is, is that they ultimately just want tech authoritarianism and they don't want any left wing speech and they are going to continue to pursue mass censorship in in favor of Christian fundamentalist values. On the left, like Democrats rather, who I don't even know if they're left, centrist, I guess, Democrats were like, Democrats were like, Like, we want, we want censorship, but we want to censor you. We want to censor Donald Trump.

We want to censor Q&N. We want to censor all this. Then the leftists, like, more progressive than that are just like tech bad. So yeah, censorship is probably good. And it's like, guys, no, you should be against this whole system. We should want transparency and actually to not reward them. Like, I just, I can't stress enough how much of a role Facebook played. I don't.

I think Mike is right that like Fostas has to probably wouldn't have passed without Facebook's vocal support. And so part of the reason we have this broken. that is so bad for all of us is because of these platforms. And if you say that that chipping away at Section 230 cracks down on big tech, I will ask again, do you think Facebook has less power today than they did in 2018? Yeah, that says it right there.

It's so absurd. And like, yes, leftists should have solidarity with all these marginalized groups. Like, I think we all should. I just think like so much of this, like, you see as human nature where it's like, it just doesn't seem urgent. I mean, I think the entire country of the UK went through this went through this where like they passed the online safety act in 2023. It went into effect last

year and everyone is suddenly like, I mean, I wrote a piece for The Guardian like about it. But it's like that same pitch didn't get picked up in 2023. I didn't make it in 2020. But also like I was covering it. And like these things just sort of like pass without any sort of notable opposition. And I think we need all hands on deck right now because the Democrats especially are they're trying to make this stuff, this child online safety stuff, their core issue for the midterms. And I think we should push them and say no, absolutely not. I mean, I've been also. also speaking out against like COSA. When was it first introduced?

I mean, it was years ago. 2020. Yeah. I've been talking about this stuff and keeping up to date with it for that long. And it's like even people like sex workers becoming aware of these issues and speaking out against them. It's like gaining steam over the years. But one thing that I can say with a whole lot of confidence is that generally speaking, politicians, including almost all the Democrats I'm aware of, Don't listen to sex workers.

The Free Speech Coalition will go and lobby senators. And I've never, I really want to go on a lobbying trip. I have not been able to go for scheduling reasons. But I'm friends with several people who have gone. And it's like the way they talk about the experience of like going to try to just talk, like have an appointment with the senator. They mostly just don't show up. They just ignore us.

That's why we need mainstream like left-wing voices, progressive voices, to be fighting back against the stuff or anyone really if you're on any part of the political i is spectrum i just think you cannot claim to to sort of espouse leftist ideology when you haven't spoken about this and you know when i have tried to make that point online i think you very quickly get these people that are like well sex workers have been talking about this and it's like yeah that's the point that's not enough that's not enough trans people have also i mean these are all coded anti-lgbq laws that's ultimately also what like anti-porn anti-lgbative justice these are all intertwined. Everyone affected on the front lines has been talking. Anti-bad Bunny, because they called

his halftime show pornographic too. Exactly. And it's like we need like people that have privilege that are not members of these like marginalized groups that are, you know, directly affected to really start like taking hold and and not buying into this moral panic of just like internet is bad for your kids. Like sure, in certain parts of the internet are bad for your kids, but that doesn't mean that the government should enact mass censorship and surveillance. It's so shallow. But I think that, A really big reason why we don't have more prominent figures coming out against bills like COSA is literally just because of the optics of what it's called, like a powerful Hollywood celebrity. You know, someone like, just to throw out an example, I obviously do not know him personally. But Mark Ruffalo is very vocal and political and on the left.

And I have never heard Mark Ruffalo say like, hey, we shouldn't pass COSA. And it's probably because anyone who, you know, has a big name who regularly does speak out on political issues is probably thinking to themselves like, well, I don't want to touch that one. Yeah, because you don't want to be against the stops, stop sex trafficking act. But it's like we need to get over that. Like, how stupid can we be to just fall into the trap of like, oh, well, they named the law the like, we love kids act. So I can't announce that I'm against it because I hate kids then. I think it's that, but it's like, Democrats could propose their own Ron Wyden has proposed laws, right, that do the opposite of this, that also have names, like protecting children, you know, Privacy Act or whatever, that like that actually are basically safeguards against these type of censorship laws.

We could be doing more of that, but they're not getting on board with those. And so I think there is something, yes, I think the name is inconvenient, but I think that that's even a scapegoat because you're not on board with Ron Wyden's laws and he gives them good names too. I think that it's really about buying into this like this moral panic, the Jonathan Haidt of it all, the Heritage Foundation, the like Nicosi, like the fact that Joseph Gordon Levitt, who considers himself a liberal, who is posting anti-ice content on his Instagram feed, his bio on Instagram is something about anti-AI surveillance. And yet he is working with groups like Nicosi to show up on Capitol Hill and argue that senators should vote 100 to zero on repealing Section 230.

And liberals are cheering it on. It's horrifying because if we had a full repeal of Section 230, guess what Joseph Gordon Levitt would not be able to do? He would not be able to post anti-ice stuff on his personal profiles. None of us would. It's hard to even describe to someone who doesn't understand what this means, like what a post Section 230 repeal world, like online universe, would look like. I think most social media and, like, user-generated content sites would just kind of die.

Oh, 100%. except the biggest of big tech because they have AI surveillance. And I think I just, I really want to point again to Fossa Sesta as this example, because even today on blue sky, some person was like coming in and they're like, sure, I don't support Section G30 repeal, but we should have some amendments for safety because there's a lot of misogyny online and there's a lot of hatred online. And, you know, so we should have some amendments for safety and for child safety. That is what Fasta Sesta was. That's how these laws are ultimately enacted and enforced. These laws, when they're written, And like the thing with the Online Safety Act in the UK was such a, and what's happening in Australia is like we actually can see exactly what happens when these sort of corollary laws pass in other countries.

And they are being used exactly in this way. There is a guy that was just charged, I think, with 14 years in prison for posting about Palestine action and organizing something on Facebook. Like the UK is arresting, you know, dozens of people every day for speech online. Like that's bad. So yes, would it be great to have less misogyny online? Yes, those are these are things that we can do. We can encourage people to build better platforms. We can encourage more competition.

But we're never going to get that competition if Section 230 is repealed and all of the power and all of the conversations are screened by AI and consolidated on big tech platforms. Yeah, it does seem like part of the intent here. I mean, you know, with big tech supporting something like COSA is like, yes, because it gives them even more leeway to employ AI moderation technology and surveillance across all of their platforms. It's horrifying. It kind of like frees up when I think.

about it because I'm like, oh my God. It's so devastating. I wish that like we had members of Congress that would look at this and say like, wow, Fasta Sesta was devastating. Let's do this like backwards looking report where we really, before we pass any more amendments to Section 230 or bad child safety laws, let's look at the most famous biggest one that we've passed in the past decade that is really the blueprint for all these laws that we're trying to pass now.

Let's actually take a hard look at how that's played out. and whether that's been effective. And they would see that absolutely not. It has not. And I really think everybody that voted for Fasta Sesta should have like a scarlet letter forever that I think they should be actually stripped of power in society and like have to, I don't know, suffer in some way.

But like, but I do think that like leftists should critique them. And like it's notable that none of these politicians, like we have people like Mallory McMorrow, a Senate candidate who's probably going to win in Michigan, who's backed by all these big Democrat money sort of interest. groups. Like, she has made this child online safety stuff the core of her campaign. The mainstream media is giving her endless free, good press about it. And it is the responsibility of people that do have a voice online to speak out against this stuff while you still can. Yeah, while you still can.

Well, Siri, thank you so much for chatting. And also, I really want everyone to follow your work. For anybody still listening, Siri just does such a phenomenal job calling all this out, talking about these issues, talking about these laws. So can you just say everywhere that you are online where people can follow you. Yes, thank you so much. It was such a pleasure to come on the podcast. I'm a fan of your work. For those who want to follow me, I am primarily on Instagram and Blue Sky. On Instagram, I'm The Siri Doll again. And on Blue Sky, I'm SiriDoll.com. You can also just like search my name. You'll find me there. And I also have a YouTube channel where I host somewhat irregularly, but I do do some like commentary stuff. And my channel name is just Siri Doll on YouTube.

We'll have all the links to everything in the comments as well so people can easily find it. But thank you so much for joining me. Thanks for talking about Fasta Sesta. I'm also putting a lot of links in the comments about Fasta Sesta, including coverage and some links to information with stats about how devastating this law was and why we should never do anything ever like it again. All right, that's it for this episode of my Section 230 miniseries. If you like my work, please please support me on Patreon via the link below or buy a paid subscription to my sub-sac newsletter. I'll also link below. I send a bi-weekly roundup of everything that I'm reading,

following, and seeing online. You can also get that newsletter via my Patreon, where I do monthly Q&A live streams, bonus content, and more. Thank you so much for watching and I'll be back with a brand new episode in my Section 230 miniseries coming soon.