The multi-billion dollar adult streaming industry is fueled by horrific labor abuses
“When we talked to the workers, they just wanted to go back to cockroaches, factory owners charging for toilet paper or forcing them to work during their menstrual period. I can’t get people to talk to me about the platform and that’s completely reasonable because of course you’re angry at the guy you know,” Killbride told WIRED. “But there is a whole other layer that is completely invisible. This is a multi-billion dollar industry that has been able to defend itself from criticism.”
WIRED attempted to contact BongaCams, Chaturbate, LiveJasmin and Stripchat for comment on the study results. No one answered.
HRW’s report makes important recommendations to improve conditions at both the studio and platform levels. This includes workplace safety standards for studios that are enforced by regular inspections. Models must be given breaks and receive minimum wage for their work, studio management must not force models to perform specific sexual acts or agree that they will perform any acts on behalf of the model. Additionally, models must have access to confidential reporting mechanisms so they can notify law enforcement or other authorities of workplace violations.
Developing recommendations for the platform itself is even more nuanced. Killbride says that most if not all popular adult streaming platforms have strict authentication requirements for account creation and specifically prohibit studio owners or anyone from accepting such accounts. Terms of service on behalf of others. In practice, however, companies are not doing enough to provide simple, easy-to-understand terms of service in multiple languages, including Spanish.
Platforms also need to provide channels so content creators can report violations and receive timely responses, the researchers said. And most importantly, platforms should establish policies that allow models to take ownership and transfer their accounts from the studio. Researchers found that the status quo on many platforms regarding policy language can be confusing for users or complex technical issues that cause content creators to believe they cannot assert rights own your account.
On top of that, the risk is especially high for account ownership issues, because researchers found that studios often use “recycled” accounts—accounts that are authenticated and established. created by a videographer, then retained by the studio—to circumvent minimum age requirements and stream child sexual abuse material.
“We found that even though these platforms are quite strict and have completely clear policies about not streaming children, studios still go out of their way to hire and stream children,” Killbride said. with fake IDs or, more commonly, recycled accounts.” “Our research was all done with adults, but many of the people we spoke to started streaming as children when they were between 13 and 17 years old.”
Killbride emphasized that this situation reflects an important tenet of sex worker advocacy and labor reform in general: Listening to workers about their needs and the protections that will help them deliver work in the most effective and equitable manner, while at the same time protecting other vulnerable populations. In this case, by allowing videographers to control and transfer their accounts and watched content, the adult streaming industry could also significantly reduce the prevalence of the material child sexual abuse.
