bluepenguin

I’d like to see the same data collected where sex work is legal.

In Australia, where sex work is mostly legal (laws are a bit different from state to state), sex workers used to use backpage a lot.

When it went down, they started creating their own low cost advertising platforms or moving to Locanto that’s based in Germany.

Even before this, there were better designed, sex worker specific ad platforms run by sex workers in Australia.

So you haven’t stopped anything.

I'm in AU where prostitution is legal and regulated, but laws vary from state to state.

As far as I can tell trafficking is not a huge problem. There is certainly no incentive for the majority of clients to seek out trafficked workers when the legal options are very easily available.

I've also heard a couple of stories where there have been violent clients or clients refusing to pay, and they worker just went to the police to help sort it out. So at least here the system is ok.

A lot of men go into unnecessary graphic details most of which are not really useful and unnecessarily objectify the women they review. It would be like reviewing a guitar tutor by describing how they placed their fingers on the fret board or how they turned the pages of their song book.

Which is why prostitution needs to be legalised and regulated and people need to stop stigmatising it. It becomes much less of a problem when the people involved know they have rights and can safely go to the authorities if they need help.

There's lots of online resources to find sex workers. What website you use, is probably determined by what country you're in. I've never heard of adultwork.com. There are even review sites where users can review - often in unnecessary & very creepy detail - their misadventures.

Twitter is also a very useful resource for sex workers and clients. It's a useful way for a worker to promote themselves and for potential clients to get a feel of the person before making a booking.

Even in a country where sex work is legal, I feel there is still quite a bit of opportunity to create a better online resource. Especially one that caters to the sex workers more. I feel a lot of websites are too client-centric and not as useful as they could be for client or worker.