One Year Later, How the Online Safety Act is Destroying the Sex Work Community
Words: Maedb Joy
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It is one year on since the Online Safety Act was implemented in full force, and as imagined, the impact is devastating. From being unable to advertise online causing a lack of visibility, and being presented little other option than soliciting in the street, to Instagram accounts disappearing overnight with no way to reinstate - sex workers' lives and livelihoods are at stake.
It isn’t just the sex work community that is feeling the effect of the legislation change. Queer people, feminist organisations, sex worker led businesses and events are all being affected.
“Elements of the Online Safety Act, such as age verification, have reinforced platforms' tendency to protect themselves from legal risk and public backlash by age-gating content about queerness and sex even when it complies with their guidelines," says Dr. Carolina Are.
In practice, this can mean creators are deplatformed or lose access to their online audiences because AI moderation systems incorrectly flag their content, often with no human route to appeal. It can also result in content or entire websites being made effectively invisible through reduced visibility or age restrictions, despite not breaking any rules.
Despite this the government is continuing to enforce further restrictions in a bid to ‘protect children’, under the OSA. It is only last week that Keir Starmer announced that all under 16’s will be banned from social media.
Since last year, I have personally lost nine Instagram accounts. Most notably Sexquisite Events (Nov, 2025), and Riot Party (May, 2026) which are both queer and sex worker led organisations that combined provide over one thousand freelance work opportunities for marginalised people per year. Alongside that, we create vital event spaces that both nurture and develop queer and sex worker talent, but also are community hubs for connection, support and sharing of safety tips.
Many of us have lost our business pages, our personal pages - even if it just consists of sad girl poetry like mine, or cat pictures like my friends - and our routes to other forms of work when we wish not to do sex work. Some people have also lost their sex work pages: maybe they want to do sex work, maybe they don’t. Maybe their choices under capitalism don’t need to be justified.
“Every time you are deleted you are losing more customers, more community. Every new account I make gets deleted. If I want to be on Instagram, I have to buy a new account from someone else - but then it is only up for a matter of days before it is entirely deleted”
During this time period, I have dedicated an extortionate amount of time speaking with journalists from mainstream press to cover the loss of the Sexquisite Instagram and the ecosystem that surrounded it.
The loss of our business platforms is not an isolated incident, and we sit in a graveyard of lost accounts alongside abortion activist groups, feminists rights orgs and more.
Despite this, whenever stories were published about the loss of instagram accounts, our story was discluded.
Sometimes I would receive a follow-up message saying, "I'm so sorry, Maedb. I couldn't push it over the line. Thanks for your time." Other times, I didn’t hear anything.
Censored online, and then censored again. Who comes looking for sex workers when we are erased?
photo: @whxretographer
Driven by lived experience, but also because something has to be done - I have been collecting stories about the impact that deplatforming is having on our community. I exist within a sex worker-artist community, many of us with multifaceted identities. We are writers, artists, performers, event organisers, facilitators and more.
In my specific community, hundreds of accounts have been lost. I say lost, because it is a loss. Luna Minxx tells me how losing their account felt like losing their arm. Like it had been chopped off their body, and taken from them.
The most harrowing findings are that the impact goes beyond our circumstances and income, it impacts our mental and physical health too. In one case, one member of our community (Alice Lovegood) became so unwell from the stress of losing her Instagram account and main source of income (OnlyFans and Instagram sponsorships), that she became physically disabled. Her speech impaired, as well as her movement. Likely the product of being forced to downsize her house and having bailiffs at her door. It is important to note that she is a mother with multiple children.
Luna also tells me how they first lost their account when they was trying to leave an abusive relationship as well as finish with sex work. They had a popular following, and was growing a business as a dance and pole instructor with international workshops. Banning their account meant they had to start from scratch.
This mirrors another story, Rachel shares that they made their Instagram when they were first leaving an extremely abusive relationship, and it became a safe haven for them to express themselves and find community. They go on to explain that as a Black sex worker, the feelings of erasure run deeper than “just losing an Instagram, this feeds into a pattern of historically silencing and erasing Black women and queer people”. Like Luna, they also turned to in person sex work when they lost their online platform, despite not especially wanting to.
Laura Firefox, a model and amputee, deleted at 22k, explains how she has already been excluded from work opportunities. “My prosthetist put me forward for a social media job with a prosthetics brand, but I had to tell her I don’t have 22k followers anymore. I have 500”.
Demi Jordan, a dancer from Manchester adds, “Every time you are deleted you are losing more customers, more community. Every new account I make gets deleted. If I want to be on Instagram, I have to buy a new account from someone else - but then it is only up for a matter of days before it is entirely deleted”.
Eva tells me about how she saw back to back clients to raise money to pay a hacker. The same hacker that reinstated her accounts previously for $1300 was unfortunately unable to due to the lay offs at Meta and their insiders being fired.* Eva did not receive a refund.
Demi has similarly paid hackers to ‘white list’ her account, which revealed itself to be a scam, and ultimately ended in all of her accounts being deactivated. Demi is currently trying to claim back the money via a fraud report with the police.
In one particularly devastating case, someone reported that they were suddenly unable to contact someone they cared deeply about after being deplatformed. That platform had been the only way they stayed in touch. They later learned that their friend had died by suicide. They now live with the lasting guilt of feeling they weren't there when they were needed most.
This is why we are building a campaign to push for accountability regarding the wrongful erasure of our community. No matter how you feel about sex work, sex workers deserve the same rights and protections as anyone else. In the same way that children deserve to be protected, so do we. Society tells us to do another job, yet we are blocked access to any other option. Just let us exist!
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Maedb Joy is a writer, performer and founder of multiple platforms working with sex worker artists. More about Maedb here: https://www.maedbjoy.com/. Follow her on Substack, and new Instagram
SUPPORT THE CAMPAIGN TO HOLD META ACCOUNTABLE FOR WRONGFUL DELETIONS: https://www.change.org/p/hold-meta-accountable-for-wrongful-deletions
Book a dance workshop with Luna Minxx, and support them amid relentless deplatforming: minxxxalune@gmail.com
