Platform Capitalism and (Sex) Worker Cooperatives: Digital Sex Work in the Contemporary Platform Economy

Following the 2022 adoption of the European Union's Digital Services Act, holding intermediaries accountable for identifying and handling harmful content or services online, many of the major platforms of the adult entertainment industry made changes in their governance structures and compliance standards. These platforms’ heightened moderation eroded creators’ trust and disrupted audiences’ engagement with content created by anyone not representative of the pornographic mainstream, necessitating laborers’ negotiation and subversion of platform constraints to achieve their personal, social, and professional goals. The deregulation of labor relations and the erosive individualization of social protections have weakened the power of (sex) workers on the internet, amplifying labor competition and ushering in novel forms of exploitation. Tracing the implications of intersecting international legislation, capitalist imperatives, and marginalized laborers’ movements of resistance, this study explores emerging capitalist and cooperative adult entertainment platforms announced in the wake of the adoption of the Digital Services Act. The concurrent movements of corporate platform capitalism and worker cooperativism are vying for laborers’ support, and this study charts the solutions they promise to provide to the problems characteristic of the contemporary platform economy.