Hey folks in the US- this SESTA things look real and bad for Sex Workers, including potentially impacting everything from providers being able to share information to stay safe, to using twitter to network, potentially even impacting this here site. Have you called your elected officials about this?

More here: https://act.eff.org/action/don-t-let-congress-censor-the-internet
and here:  https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DXi95mAU0AATAbK.jpg:large

This is bad news, no doubt, but it shouldn't change anything.

 
Here's my reasoning. You should already be using a VPN to access this site. See the link below to sign up for what I use. Using a VPN means that your ISP (aka the people who can ID you) won't know what websites you visit, or what you're doing while you're there. This means that the government won't be able to tell you're on TER, p411, or any other website.  

Effectively, that makes this law unenforceable, so this is good for you (provider and hobbyist alike).

 
If you have trouble setting it up, I'd be more than happy to help you out via PM.

Unfortunately, personal internet security doesn't matter in this case, because they're coming for us at the other end. Through SESTA they are giving themselves the legal authority to hold every company liable for all content on its site that has to do with prostitution or sex trafficking. Right now, TER and Eros, for example, use loopholes. Those would be gone. They would be able to sue any US-based--and, technically, although more difficult--offshore-based--company and shut them down if their content has anything to do with selling sex. So, if it passes and is enforced, it will affect every site we use to do this safely. They essentially want us back in the stone ages of having to ask a particular guy for a particular bar or street corner to go to. It's absurd.

The good news is that the bill gives LE no additional funding to accomplish this. They are hoping the bill itself will have a chilling effect, because law suits against online companies are pricier than the government is going to shell out for, unless you have a Kamala Harris or a Maura Healey around. And it is, after all, the oldest profession. New sites will spring up as soon as others are shut down. There is simply an infinite demand and always will be, so us ladies will find a way to supply. Just without our current safety net. And those who are being trafficked are just, heartbreakingly and quite simply, fucked.

So please! CALL YOUR SENATOR!!!! (See the post above for a script!)

xo
Ernestine

No doubt worth giving your elected officials a ring and an earful, we should all be doing that anyway.

 
That said, TER's servers might be in the US, but the company is based outside of the US, so wouldn't fall under that jurisdiction. They could also go after ICANN for selling them a .com domain name, which would mean the url would have to change to something ICANN doesn't own. Again, not really catastrophic.  

 
What a VPN does is hide your personal traffic, and get you to a part of the internet with access to TER (or netflix or whatever). It means they can do nothing on an individual basis, and very, very little on a site by site basis. This is a classic "we don't know how the internet works but want to lock it down" kind of law. What really happens is that they cut one head off and 10 grow back in its place.