How technology is actually changing sex work

Wired magazine's recent feature on how technology is changing the sex trade led to a frantic orgy of media coverage. Of sociologist Sudhir Venkatesh's many interesting findings, one tidbit was magnified in headline after headline: "Study: Facebook replacing Craigslist for prostitutes," "Prostitutes Have Just Moved From Craigslist To Facebook,""Prostitutes migrate to Facebook after Craigslist crackdown," "Is Facebook the new Craigslist for hookers?" -- and so on and so forth. The narrative was too delicious to resist: Hookers lurking in the shadows of the social network! It was surprising news for the general public -- but even more so for actual sex workers.

"I've never heard of any sex workers advertising on Facebook. Not a one," wrote "Claudia," a New York-based sex worker, in an e-mail. "I gotta tell you, to me that is the biggest B.S.," wrote another. Apparently, the article has inspired heated back-and-forths on industry e-mail lists. Audacia Ray of the Red Umbrella Project, which is dedicated to promoting sex workers' first-hand accounts, said in an e-mail, "It's frustrating to see 'expert' data on our lives that doesn't reflect real experiences."

The Wired piece reports that 83 percent of the women Venkatesh followed -- a group of 290 sex workers in New York, more than half of whom made over $30K a year -- had a Facebook page, which is really no surprise, given that the site has roughly 500 million active users. He also predicts "that by the end of 2011, Facebook will be the leading online recruitment space" -- a forecast the sex workers I spoke with, who were "high-class" escorts like most of the women he followed, found highly dubious. I called up Venkatesh, a sociology professor at Columbia University, to hear his side of the story and, what do you know, he said, "It's not as though Facebook is replacing Craigslist." He added that these women "aren't using it to advertise themselves in terms of sexual services." Publications glommed on to his findings and then distorted the data. He clarified over the phone that the social network is a tool for escorts to "insert themselves in a small community of people" through certain fan pages or groups. It can also allow workers to develop relationships over time and reassure hesitant clients, he said. Facebook is "not necessarily great for meeting one-off people that you might give a service and then never see them again."

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