How SCOTUS overturning Roe could be used to curb online freedoms and surveil vulnerable populations, as happened to sex workers following FOSTA/SESTA in 2018
FOSTA/SESTA—laws that deplatformed sex workers—helped build the gallows for overturning Roe v. Wade.
WiredOlivia Snow
Context & Ripple Effects
The warning builds on the 2018 FOSTA/SESTA crackdown, which related coverage described as harming marginalized sex workers rather than stopping trafficking; workers then sought continuity through a Mastodon-based alternative to deplatforming. The article treats that episode as a precedent for how a legal change framed around protection can narrow online speech and services for vulnerable groups.
Before the ruling, related coverage had already identified location and search data held by tech companies as potential evidence in abortion-related prosecutions. That puts platform data practices, not only public-facing speech rules, at the center of the post-Roe risk.
First-order effects
People seeking abortion care face greater exposure when platforms retain location or search records that can be sought for criminal cases.
Online platforms and service providers face pressure to limit abortion-related content, services, or user activity, echoing the constraints sex workers encountered after FOSTA/SESTA.
Second-order effects
Platforms managing legal and reputational risk may over-remove sensitive health and community information, extending the deplatforming dynamic documented in the early criticism of SESTA's censorship approach.
Alternative and decentralized services gain relevance for communities displaced by mainstream platforms, as Switter.at did for sex workers during the FOSTA crackdown.
Third-order effects
If abortion enforcement increasingly relies on intermediaries' records and moderation decisions, online rights disputes will shift from speech alone to who collects data and who is forced to act on it.
The FOSTA/SESTA-to-Roe arc points toward a broader pattern in which laws aimed at vulnerable populations reshape platform governance and make marginalized users bear the first costs.
The trend: US legal battles over vulnerable populations are increasingly turning platforms' moderation and user-data practices into mechanisms of enforcement.
⚠️INSTAGRAM HAS TAKEN DOWN OUR PAGE.⚠️ Please help us continue to spread the word that https://abortionfinder.org/ is HERE to help folks access abortion care, and we aren't going ANYWHERE. https://twitter.com/...
Of course most companies in their privacy policies say they comply with legal requests for data. But it's not binary: Google pushed back in court on the breadth of some location data warrants. But no acknowledgement of whether tech firms will try that here https://www.vice.com/..…
Only 2% of venture dollars in the U.S. go to women. It's thus sad but not unsurprising that the biggest capital allocators in venture capital consider the Supreme Court dialing back 50 years of progress in women's rights as a non-event. The surprise would be if they even noticed …
Read @MistressSnowPhD on sex workers as early warning smoke detectors of a growing carceral state. It's not surveillance capitalism so much as it is surveillance theocracy. https://www.wired.com/...
Just one of so many ways surveillance capitalism and Big Tech infect our daily lives. (Some good resources here on the tech implications of overturning Roe v Wade: https://mayfirst.coop/...) https://www.vice.com/...
Technology that can be abused, will be abused, the only variable is time. Corporate policies change, laws change and leadership changes, if data is collected it's only a matter of time before it can be abused. https://twitter.com/...
“This removal of federal protections gives lawmakers a path to criminalizing any online discussion about abortion, restrictions that can easily extend to include reproductive health entirely.” https://twitter.com/...
“Sex workers are typically the first demographic to be targeted because we are excellent scapegoats; we're not only criminalized but also highly stigmatized, so the general public is less likely to hear us let alone believe us.” https://www.wired.com/...
“Sex workers, fully aware that the general public is unconcerned with our well-being, have already been forced to develop strategies and guides on how to evade detection...strategies that can help abortion seekers and more as the carceral state expands.” https://www.wired.com/...
“One of the most disturbing aspects of this financial discrimination raises the question: how do they know?” Excellent, alarming piece about the hungry surveillance apparatuses that are ready to track you in the post-Roe world https://twitter.com/...
The infrastructure for the surveillance and punishment of abortion-seekers already exists, and if you want to make sense of it, listen to sex workers who's been navigating and strategizing for survival. https://www.wired.com/...
Listen to the canaries in your communities. LGBTQI+ folks and sex workers been talking about the rise in christofascism for years, but so few ever heard us. Consider this, then, a canary's song. Are You Ready to Be Surveilled Like a Sex Worker? | WIRED https://www.wired.com/...
Re-upping this column I wrote in May, after the draft Dobbs opinion leaked. Tech companies still aren't saying what they will do when the inevitable data requests come from prosecutors... https://www.axios.com/...
.@Abortion_Finder is one of the easiest and most reliable ways to find information about your closest LEGAL abortion provider. It is a tool that uses data from @ANSIRH at UCSF to ensure folks have access to up-to-date information. Today @instagram removed their account. https://t…
Abortion still is legal in many states. Why would @instagram take down the page!?!? This is censorship in an effort to control women and it needs to stop! If you or someone you know needs to find reproductive healthcare, visit: https://abortionfinder.org/ https://twitter.com/...
.@instagram giving into the “illegality” of abortion immediately rather than even attempting to take a stance is disappointing but not at all surprising. @facebook is very white, very tech bro male https://twitter.com/...
The main way to not put people's user data at risk of being handed over to law enforcement is to not collect it or to limit how much you collect and how long you store it for in the first place.