Reframing ‘online safety’: the neo-abolitionist agenda and the digital surveillance of sex workers

This article examines the governance of digital sex work and online sexual content through the lenses of critical criminology, critical security studies, and digital labour studies. Focusing on key legislative frameworks – including SESTA/FOSTA (US), the UK Online Safety Act, and the EU Digital Services Act – it demonstrates how policies ostensibly designed to combat trafficking and protect children instead expand surveillance, financial exclusion, and algorithmic governance, exacerbating the marginalisation and criminalisation of sex workers. Rooted in ‘creeping neo-abolitionism’, these laws function as carceral digital governance, reinforcing exclusion through automated content moderation, biometric tracking, and platform policing rather than providing meaningful protections. Digital harms, whether stemming from AI-generated pornography or platform regulation, are fundamentally labour issues that cannot be addressed through punitive, carceral frameworks. Instead, this article advocates for a shift toward harm reduction, community-led interventions, and policies that uphold sexual autonomy and labour rights. At the same time, technology is not solely a tool of repression; it also enables networks of care, digital solidarity, and alternative infrastructures for sex worker resistance. A radical reconfiguration of ‘online safety’ is essential: one that challenges dominant legal and technological apparatuses and centres sex workers’ agency and expertise.