FOSTA-SESTA
Based on Wikipedia: FOSTA-SESTA
In March 2018, Craigslist did something it had never done in its two decades of existence: it shut down an entire section of its website. The Personals section—where millions of Americans had posted everything from missed connections to casual encounter ads—simply vanished. In its place, a terse message: "Any tool or service can be misused. We can't take such risk without jeopardizing all our other services."
The risk Craigslist feared wasn't hackers or lawsuits from angry users. It was a newly passed federal law with a name designed to be unassailable: the Allow States and Victims to Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act, combined with the Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act. Together, they became known as FOSTA-SESTA.
The law promised to crack down on sex trafficking. Instead, critics argue, it created a cascading crisis that endangered the very people it claimed to protect while fundamentally reshaping how the internet handles anything remotely connected to human sexuality.
The Shield That Made the Internet Possible
To understand FOSTA-SESTA, you first need to understand what it dismantled.
In 1996, Congress passed Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. This single piece of legislation contains what many consider the most important twenty-six words in internet history: "No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider."
What does that actually mean? Consider a newspaper. If the New York Times publishes a defamatory article, the newspaper itself can be sued. The paper chose to print those words, reviewed them, edited them, and put its name behind them. Traditional publishers bear legal responsibility for what they publish.
But what about a website where users post their own content? Before Section 230, the legal situation was genuinely bizarre. If a website did absolutely nothing to moderate user content—allowing everything from helpful discussions to obscene harassment—courts generally found it wasn't liable. It was just a passive conduit, like a telephone company that can't be sued because criminals use phones.
However, if a website tried to be responsible by removing some objectionable content, courts sometimes found this made the site more like a traditional publisher. By exercising editorial judgment in some cases, the site became potentially liable for all the content it didn't remove. The perverse incentive was clear: websites were legally safer doing nothing at all than attempting to create decent spaces for users.
Section 230 fixed this by creating what's called a "safe harbor." Online platforms could not be held civilly liable for content their users posted, regardless of whether they moderated that content. This protection didn't extend to criminal law or intellectual property violations, but for civil matters—defamation, obscenity, and similar claims—the platform was shielded.
This single provision enabled the modern internet. Without it, platforms like Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Reddit, Yelp, and countless others could not function. No company could afford the legal risk of allowing billions of users to post content if each post might trigger a lawsuit.
The Backpage Problem
For years, law enforcement and anti-trafficking advocates had grown increasingly frustrated with a website called Backpage. Originally created as a classified advertising site similar to Craigslist, Backpage had become something darker by the early 2010s.
The site's adult services section had become, according to numerous investigations, a marketplace for sex trafficking—including the trafficking of children. The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children reported an 846 percent increase in reports of suspected child sex trafficking between 2010 and 2015. Senator Rob Portman of Ohio, who led a congressional investigation into Backpage, attributed much of this increase to the site.
The evidence against Backpage was damning. The site didn't just passively accept advertisements for illegal services. According to investigators, it actively filtered out keywords that might expose criminal activity, essentially helping traffickers craft advertisements that would evade detection. This wasn't passive hosting; this was alleged active participation in a criminal enterprise.
Yet prosecutors kept losing in court. Whenever victims or state attorneys general tried to hold Backpage accountable, the site invoked Section 230. It was an interactive computer service. Users created the content. The shield held.
Attempts to get the Supreme Court to weigh in failed. The legal consensus seemed to be that even websites facilitating obvious criminality were protected, as long as users technically created the content.
Senator Portman found this intolerable. "Section 230 protections were never intended to apply—and they should not apply—to companies that knowingly facilitate sex trafficking," he argued. The law that had enabled the internet's growth was now, in his view, protecting "unscrupulous business practices" that destroyed lives.
The Legislative Response
The Senate crafted SESTA—the Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act. The House created FOSTA—the Allow States and Victims to Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act. The two were eventually combined into a single package.
The law did two main things. First, it created a new definition in federal anti-trafficking law: "participation in a venture" now explicitly included knowingly assisting, facilitating, or supporting sex trafficking. Second, and more significantly, it carved out an exception to Section 230's immunity. Websites could now face both federal and state enforcement actions—criminal and civil—if they violated sex trafficking laws.
The coalition supporting the bill was remarkably broad. Twenty-seven senators from both parties co-sponsored it. Major corporations including 21st Century Fox and Oracle pledged support. Fox released a statement declaring that "everyone that does business in this medium has a civic responsibility to help stem illicit and illegal activity." Oracle's vice president praised the bill for establishing "some measure of accountability for those that cynically sell advertising but are unprepared to help curtail sex trafficking."
Anti-trafficking organizations were enthusiastic. The New Jersey Coalition Against Human Trafficking called it "groundbreaking." Representatives who supported the bill framed it as closing an obvious loophole. "Congress must act to clarify that Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act was never meant to shield sex traffickers," declared Representative Carolyn Maloney of New York.
The vote wasn't close. The House passed the combined FOSTA-SESTA package 388 to 25. The Senate approved it 97 to 2. Only senators Ron Wyden, the original author of Section 230, and Rand Paul voted against it. President Donald Trump signed it into law on April 11, 2018.
The Warnings Nobody Heeded
Despite the overwhelming bipartisan support, a significant coalition had tried to stop the bill. Their warnings, which were largely dismissed at the time, now read as grimly prophetic.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation, the American Civil Liberties Union, the Wikimedia Foundation, the Center for Democracy and Technology, and numerous other pro-free speech and pro-internet organizations all opposed SESTA-FOSTA. Their arguments were technical but important.
The fundamental problem, critics argued, lay in how the law would actually function. Under the original Section 230 framework, websites had strong incentives to moderate content. They could remove objectionable material without fear that doing so would make them liable for what remained. FOSTA-SESTA created the opposite incentive.
Consider a platform that discovers some of its users may be involved in sex trafficking. Under the old rules, the platform could remove the content and cooperate with law enforcement without legal risk. Under FOSTA-SESTA, the very act of discovering such content might constitute "knowing" facilitation. The platform now faces a choice: invest heavily in monitoring everything (financially impossible for most companies), shut down anything that might conceivably be misused (what Craigslist did), or simply avoid looking too closely at what users are doing.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation's attorney Aaron Mackey warned that companies would need "a team of lawyers" to evaluate all possible scenarios under overlapping state and federal laws—something financially impossible for smaller platforms and startups.
Senator Wyden, despite being virtually alone in the Senate in opposing the bill, issued a prophetic statement: "I continue to be deeply troubled that this bill's approach will make it harder to catch dangerous criminals, that it will favor big tech companies at the expense of startups, and that it will stifle innovation."
Even the Department of Justice expressed concerns. In a letter to the House Judiciary Committee, Assistant Attorney General Stephen Boyd warned that certain provisions might actually make it harder to prosecute sex traffickers. He also raised the possibility that parts of the law could be unconstitutional under the Constitution's ex post facto clause, which prohibits retroactive criminal laws.
The Consumer Technology Association offered perhaps the most concise critique: SESTA was well-intentioned but could "create a trial lawyer bonanza of overly-broad civil lawsuits."
The Sex Worker Crisis
The most urgent opposition came from an unexpected quarter: sex workers themselves.
This requires acknowledging a distinction that the law largely ignores. Sex trafficking—forcing or coercing people into commercial sex acts—is a serious crime that victimizes vulnerable people. Consensual adult sex work—prostitution, escorting, and related activities—is a separate phenomenon. While prostitution is illegal in most of the United States, many adults choose to engage in it. The legal status of their work doesn't change the fact that they are people with safety concerns.
Before FOSTA-SESTA, sex workers had developed strategies for reducing the dangers inherent in their work. Online platforms allowed them to screen clients, share warnings about dangerous individuals, work indoors rather than on streets, and maintain some control over their circumstances. Was this legal? Often not. Was it safer than the alternatives? Overwhelmingly yes.
Organizations like the Sex Workers Outreach Project described FOSTA-SESTA as a "disguised internet censorship bill." The hashtag campaigns #LetUsSurvive and #SurvivorsAgainstSESTA emerged as sex workers tried to warn legislators about what would happen when the platforms they relied on disappeared.
They were right to be worried. When FOSTA-SESTA passed, platforms began shutting down immediately. And not just explicitly adult platforms. Reddit removed several subreddits. Tumblr banned adult content entirely. Dating apps tightened their terms of service. Craigslist eliminated its Personals section. A small furry community personals website called Pounced.org voluntarily shut down entirely rather than risk liability.
For sex workers, the consequences were immediate and severe. With online platforms gone, many were forced back to street work—statistically far more dangerous. Those who remained online found that the platforms still operating had dramatically increased their fees and adopted more exploitative practices. With fewer options, sex workers had less bargaining power and greater vulnerability.
The Ironic Twist
Here is perhaps the strangest part of the FOSTA-SESTA story: the very case that inspired the law was resolved without it.
Just days before Trump signed FOSTA-SESTA, federal authorities seized Backpage.com. The site's founders were charged with facilitating prostitution, money laundering, and racketeering. The prosecution didn't need FOSTA-SESTA at all.
In late March and early April 2018—after FOSTA-SESTA passed Congress but before it became law—courts in Massachusetts and Florida ruled that Backpage was liable for facilitating sex trafficking under existing law. The key finding? By actively filtering out keywords related to minors, Backpage wasn't just hosting user content. It was participating in creating that content, which stripped away Section 230 protection under existing precedent.
This precedent, established in a 2008 case called Fair Housing Council of San Fernando Valley v. Roommates.com, LLC, had already clarified that Section 230 immunity doesn't apply when websites actively help create illegal content rather than merely hosting it. The Electronic Frontier Foundation had been making this argument all along: websites knowingly facilitating trafficking were already liable. FOSTA-SESTA wasn't filling a legal gap; it was creating new ones.
The Results Are In
By 2021, enough time had passed to evaluate whether FOSTA-SESTA was achieving its goals. The Government Accountability Office, a nonpartisan congressional watchdog, published its findings in June of that year.
The results were stark.
Criminal restitution had not been sought under FOSTA-SESTA's new provisions. Not once. Civil damages had not been awarded under the law. Not a single dollar. Only one civil case had even attempted to seek damages under FOSTA, and that case was dismissed.
In the few criminal cases where FOSTA was relevant, prosecutors found they achieved better results using racketeering and money laundering charges instead. The law designed to give prosecutors new tools to fight sex trafficking was, in practice, barely being used.
The GAO identified several reasons for this. FOSTA could only apply to crimes committed after the law was signed, limiting its reach. The civil remedy provisions were "new and untested," making lawyers reluctant to rely on them. And perhaps most significantly, the seizure of Backpage itself—which happened before FOSTA became law—had already disrupted many commercial sex platforms, leaving fewer targets for the new legal weapons.
Multiple media sources have described FOSTA-SESTA with a damning summary: a failure that "only put sex workers in danger and wasted taxpayer money."
The Broader Implications
Even setting aside questions about sex trafficking specifically, FOSTA-SESTA established a precedent that worries many observers. For the first time, Congress had carved out a specific exception to Section 230 immunity.
This matters because if one exception can be made, others can follow. Some observers predicted FOSTA-SESTA would serve as a template for future limitations. Copyright holders, frustrated with online piracy, might seek similar carve-outs. Those concerned about terrorist content might demand websites be held liable for failing to remove extremist material quickly enough. Every interest group with concerns about online content now had a roadmap.
The support FOSTA-SESTA received from major entertainment companies like 21st Century Fox wasn't lost on anyone. If weakening Section 230 could help fight sex trafficking, why not use the same approach to fight copyright infringement?
For smaller companies and startups, the law created particular challenges. Large platforms like Facebook and Google can afford teams of lawyers and content moderators. A small forum or startup cannot. Senator Wyden's warning about the law favoring big tech at the expense of smaller competitors was playing out exactly as he predicted.
The Complexity of Good Intentions
FOSTA-SESTA illustrates a recurring problem in legislation: laws named after victims and framed around fighting evil are extraordinarily difficult to oppose, even when their actual effects may be harmful.
Who wants to be the senator who voted against fighting sex trafficking? Wyden and Paul were willing to be those senators, and they were essentially alone. The bill's framing made substantive debate nearly impossible. Technical objections about legal liability and chilling effects couldn't compete with stories of trafficked children.
Yet the technical objections were correct. The law did create chilling effects. It did push sex workers into more dangerous circumstances. It did provide new tools to prosecutors that they largely didn't use. It did establish precedents that could weaken internet speech protections more broadly.
The deeper irony is that FOSTA-SESTA may have made sex trafficking harder, not easier, to fight. When sex trafficking operated on visible platforms like Backpage, law enforcement could monitor it, gather evidence, identify victims, and build cases. When those platforms disappeared, trafficking didn't stop. It just moved to darker corners of the internet, encrypted messaging apps, and other venues much harder to surveil.
This is a pattern that repeats throughout the history of prohibition: driving activity underground often makes it more dangerous and harder to police, not less.
Where We Are Now
FOSTA-SESTA remains the law of the land. Section 230 now has an explicit carve-out for sex trafficking liability. Platforms continue to operate under its constraints, generally by being more restrictive about anything that might conceivably touch on sexual content.
The debates it sparked continue. Some argue the law should be strengthened. Others call for its repeal. The Biden administration, like the Trump administration before it, has suggested Section 230 should be modified more broadly, though the parties disagree about exactly how.
For sex workers, life continues under more dangerous conditions. For platforms, uncertainty about liability persists. For prosecutors, the tools FOSTA provided mostly gather dust while other legal approaches prove more effective.
And for the internet as a whole, FOSTA-SESTA stands as a warning about what happens when legislation is crafted to be politically unassailable rather than practically effective. The law's name made it almost impossible to oppose. Its effects made it worth opposing anyway.
Sometimes the most dangerous laws are the ones with the best names.