Switter

Backpage got killed last week. The FBI shut it down using new federal laws designed to fight sex trafficking—FOSTA, SESTA, the acronyms that scare the shit out of platforms that host user content. And now sex workers are panicking, which is what happens when you build your livelihood on someone else’s servers.

Twitter’s been the workaround for years. You post, you advertise, you connect with clients, whatever you need to do. It’s decentralized enough to feel safe, popular enough to actually reach people. But the moment Congress decided platforms are responsible for what users do on them, every social network started sweating. Twitter could be next.

So sex workers did what sex workers always do when the system fails them. They built their own thing. Switter, it’s called. Built on Mastodon, which is open-source software, no corporate structure, no single company to sue or shut down. No ads, no data harvesting, no shareholders wondering if bad publicity is worth the user base. You post what you want. People see it. That’s it.

It’s funny how the people with the least institutional power end up showing everyone else how platforms should work. They didn’t wait for regulation to catch up or for some venture-backed startup to solve it. They took existing technology and made it theirs. Decentralized, distributed, owned by no one. The thing everyone keeps talking about that actually exists, just not where you’d expect it.