HISTORY IS BEING ERASED. How Meta’s censorship is targeting sex worker and women-owned businesses, forcing people offline and pushing them back into precarious forms of sex work

"Somebody tell Meta that you cannot kill community, no matter how hard you try."

Photo by @whxretographer

This weekend, I lost 4 of my Instagram accounts. Most notably, Sexquisite Events, the performing arts company I run (founded in 2019) that creates paid creative opportunities for sex workers, and aims to create social change through art and performance.

Permanently deleted at 26,000 followers with no prior warnings, (all in the green in settings), with a paid meta subscription, and only told “we want to keep our community a respectable place”.

Alongside that, the creative eco-system that surrounds Sexquisite also has been erased. UK Sex Worker Pride, and the Sexquisite Podcast both of which I founded this year and have been working tirelessly to build, alongside our resident hosts ventures: Cybertease (a revolutionary all bodies, all genders, socialist strip club, which was one of the first of its kind), April Fiasco’s cabaret page, and April’s personal account.

Sexquisite and Cybertease now sit in a graveyard of deleted platforms, alongside other London based sex worker–run and women owned organisations like *One Night Parties, Sex and Rage and 3syncra. All of which create vital paid work from performance bookings to backstage roles in production and administration. This is a life line for the sex worker community, who are often excluded from the mainstream workforce. Working with us can help individuals fill in CV gaps, and develop skills that enable them to re-enter mainstream employment, alongside providing regular alternative income.

Alongside that, our events are a rare safe-haven for queer and sex working communities who rely on in-person events to find belonging, build networks, and access support.

These companies exist amongst other individuals in our network who have lost their accounts, Alice Lovegood, a sex educator and mother who was deleted at 450k, (*Miss Gold who runs One Night Parties is also a mother, and has a family that relies on her), Black Venus’s personal account, Angel Bella a sex worker and performer with national popularity and most notably joining Miss Bashful at solo and festival dates, and others who have been deleted but eventually got reinstated like popular public figures and sex workers - Rebecca Crow, Ivy Maddox, Gemma Rose and Luna Minxx.

We represent a community of sex worker performers that navigate dual identities.

We are all public about our current or past lived experience of sex work, and use it to create cultural capital in a world that profits and appropriates sex worker culture; in order to provide future non sex work creative opportunities for ourselves, and others.

We are poets, photographers, dancers, activists, playwrights, instructors, actors, performers, curators and film makers.

And to be clear, this isn’t an argument that we are more deserving of safety or rights than those who use Instagram purely to promote sex work.

What we are saying is this: when platforms remove access to visibility and creative opportunities, they narrow our choices and ability to diversify our income streams and access other forms of work.

It pushes many of us back into sex work, including those who wish not to do it, for whatever reason.

This is gendered violence and economic punishment.

We’re told sex work is a mistake, something we should “move on from”. And yet, the moment we try to step into other roles - creative, professional, public - the system shuts the door. It’s the same logic as historic prostitutes cautions. First they shame you for doing the work, then they use it to justify denying you any other path.

For me, this experience brings up a past that I have long wished to escape.

It’s the day after the attack, and I am voice noting Alice Lovegood. I say attack, because as Rebecca Crow tells me, “It feels like being a victim of a crime”; and it really does feel that way.

Anyway, so I’m voice noting Alice, with tears in my eyes, trying to place my finger on the feeling this experience is bringing up for me.

I tell her, “I don’t know if you know this, but I was arrested for sex work when I was sixteen, and this feels the same. Being misunderstood by a system. Being told you are wrong when you need help and protection and looking after. Being hurt and then blamed for it”.

She replies, “You’re exactly right.”

Then she proceeds to tell me what the deletion actually cost her: sixty percent of her income gone overnight, debt piling, rent payments missed, bailiffs at her door. She fell into a deep depression, with CPTSD symptoms she had spent years managing resurfacing. And, when she tried to rebuild from scratch, a single viral video brought a wave of harassment, without the protection of the community and credibility her original platform once provided.

It is true for both of us that we have both come from low income backgrounds, and created platforms that provide for ourselves, families, and for multiple members of staff. All of which is now jeopardised.

Sexquisite became a deeply personal project for me. I poured my life into it because for a long time I felt like a failure, a GCSE dropout, someone who’d been processed by systems rather than supported by them, and continually misunderstood. Sexquisite was my proof that I was worth something, that sex workers were, that we are multifaceted, talented, deserving of rights and respect, and that we could build something powerful and influential on our own terms.

When you can’t find your place in the world, create it.

I was also on a mission, to destigmatise sex work and spark real social change. And whether I wanted it to or not, having 26,000 followers on Instagram became part of that proof. To the outside world, that number meant legitimacy. It showed that people cared about our work and believed in it.

Miss Gold, founder of One Night Parties, tells me:

“An Instagram account isn’t just an account. It’s years of labour: writing, sharing, connecting, building. Losing one isn’t a minor inconvenience, it directly impacts a business. It took us six years to reach 30k. Do we have another six years to rebuild it?”

She continues:

“One Night is a safer space for queer people. Our work centres women. Our events are built around consent, liberation and community care. We are a marginalised community that should be protected, not erased.”

Venus, founder of Sex and Rage and 3Syncra, echoes the same pattern:

“I’ve had three accounts suspended: my personal page, Sex and Rage, and 3Syncra. My business partner’s personal and event accounts were also taken. All of this happened twice in one year. Another account we worked on - one focused only on art and music - was reinstated instantly. Mine still isn’t. I’ve lost business, opportunities, and the workers I employ through Sex and Rage have lost work. The censorship has even jeopardised our ability to apply for arts funding.”

And then there is Rebecca Crow, model, activist, organiser, whose experience makes the violence undeniable -

“I’ve lost my Instagram nine times. It was at 725,000 followers and would be over a million now if it had remained active. My reach is destroyed, posts hit 1–2% of my audience. Even when my account is fully in the green, it’s never recommended.

I lose hundreds of thousands daily. Realistically, my financial loss over time is over a million. My influencer work is gone, my reputation damaged.

And I believe it’s because I organised two protests outside Meta HQ. I was made an example.”

These stories are not isolated. They expose a pattern where sex workers are punished for existing, while the culture we created is commodified, and repackaged for mass consumption. The same imagery that gets us deleted fuels global advertising campaigns, arena tours, and multimillion pound brands without consequence.

Take Honey Birdette, for example - an international lingerie company built on strip-club aesthetics and overtly sexualised imagery. Their ads run freely and their content is algorithmically boosted. Their visuals are identical to what would get a marginalised sex worker led business banned immediately. Maybe it’s only acceptable when your business serves late-stage capitalism.

We also see it in pop culture. Lily Allen can talk about sex work in her lyrics. Herself and other celebrities can experiment with OnlyFans, and treat it like a branding exercise whilst staying fully platformed. Sabrina Carpenter can dance on a pole in a music video, and hang out of cars on highroads as if she is picking up clients and it’s labelled artistic direction, not a community guideline violation.

It’s our culture, we’re just not allowed to access it.

Dr Carolina Are (@bloggeronpole), a digital criminologist at the Centre for Digital Citizens, Northumbria University, has been tracking platform governance and online abuse since 2017. Her research confirms our experiences:

“For years now, my research participants, and especially sex workers, performers, LGBTQIA+ and BIPOC social media users, have been telling me Meta’s appeals system is unjust and dysfunctional. The company disproportionately focuses on removing content but not on rectifying mistakes contrary to any democratic process, where appeals are essential for fairness.

The disproportionate targeting of marginalised communities is in direct opposition to Meta’s public claims about safety and freedom of speech. Meta say they censor to protect users - yet they show no concern for the livelihoods destroyed through mistaken removals.

Zuckerberg recently announced that new moderation policies would mean ‘more freedom’ and ‘less censorship,’ yet this freedom seems to apply mostly to AI slop and far-right content - not to the communities who rely on these platforms to survive. Their governance suggests that ‘safety’ matters far less than PR, political optics, and investor approval.

I have repeatedly found myself acting as an unofficial, unpaid intermediary for deleted users through my research, building spreadsheets simply to cope - because Meta will not.

Their broken appeals system has created a dangerous marketplace where people are now paying thousands to hackers in hopes of recovering accounts, often being scammed.

And with a Trump presidency and Big Tech scrambling to appease it, I see no political will to improve moderation for marginalised users. In fact, the situation appears to be deteriorating, unless the threat of bad press forces action.”

Carolina’s research affirms what we already know, that the systems that keep us oppressed, will not be coming to save us. Our survival has always depended on each other, on other sex workers, on our extended chosen families, and on the queer communities who consume, celebrate, and inherit our culture.

So what can you do to help? Firstly, thanks for reading this far if you already have. I appreciate you <3

Share this article far and wide.

Follow our new account and share so people can reconnect with us.

Buy tickets to our upcoming tour in London, Manchester and Bristol, and help us spread the word.

Listen to and share the Sexquisite Podcast (as we also lost that account). Click the notification bell to be reminded of new episodes!

Tell your friends, your networks, your timelines.

Every follow, every share, every ticket, every conversation matters!

This is how independent culture survives. This is how marginalised art stays alive.

Lots of love,

Maedb xxxx

I am a writer, performer and founder of Sexquisite Events, UK Sex Worker Pride, The Sexquisite Podcast and co-founder of Riot Party. I create spaces where sex workers are celebrated, not stigmatised. I create art that is feminist, political, and multidisciplinary. Stay in touch with me by subscribing to my Substack, and following me on Instagram (albeit unsafe lol).

Myself & Alice Lovegood by @charleywilliamsphotography