Hacking//Hustling (Fair Use) Ana Valens Ana Valens— 2020-01-26 06:00 am Two years after SESTA-FOSTA became law, a sex worker-led research initiative has confirmed that the “anti-sex trafficking” law actually renders sex workers “more vulnerable to human trafficking and exploitation.” The study, released this week, is one of the first to confirm SESTA-FOSTA’s harm through direct correspondence with those affected. Erased: The Impact of FOSTA-SESTA is a 53-page study penned by sex workers’ rights tech collective Hacking//Hustling. The study features two survey groups, online sex workers and street sex workers who have limited technological access, and features self-reported data via a participatory action research model. Cowriters Danielle Blunt and Ariel Wolf authored the study with help from Naomi Lauren of the Western Massachusetts-based survival and street-sex worker advocacy group Whose Corner Is It Anyway. Erased is steered by sex workers and organizers in its entirety. Blunt works as a professional dominatrix and has a master’s degree in public health, Wolf is a researcher and former sex worker who previously worked with the Red Umbrella Project, and Lauren is both an organizer and stripper. The project began while Blunt was working on her master’s, she told the Daily Dot. Simultaneously doing sex work in the post-SESTA-FOSTA world and studying how it impacted her community “really lit a fire under [her] ass” and emphasized why she needed to publish the study’s findings “as quickly and safely as possible,” Blunt said.