Dear Internet,
It is with a heavy heart that Assembly Four has decided to shut down Switter. The shutdown will occur on the 14th of March, 2022 and as of today, the 14th of February, 2022, new user registrations are disabled. We will shut the instance down and delete all data on the 14th of March 2022 at 11:45PM (Australian Eastern Daylight Time).
The recent anti-sex work and anti-LGBTQIA+ legislative changes not only in Australia, but in the UK, US and other jurisdictions have made it impossible for us to appropriately and ethically maintain compliance for over 430,000+ users on a social media platform.
Switter was founded in early 2018, and it grew exponentially. We never could have anticipated how important the platform would become to the survival of Sex Workers in an increasingly hostile legislative environment. Big tech and the internet itself “owes a debt of gratitude to the smut peddlers” who helped popularise them.
We have worked tirelessly, trying to find a way where closing Switter wasn’t our only option, as we know it is a refuge for marginalised people during a politically and economically turbulent time; where surviving has become that much harder.
Over the years, Assembly Four has engaged with various regulatory bodies, including but not limited to the Australian eSafety Commission, via submissions, consultations and public callouts of harmful and abhorrent behaviour.
Every time we have tried to engage with these bodies, we and other human rights groups are dismissed and gaslit by policy makers in government, private industry and not for profits who have a vested financial interest in the ever expanding industry of carceral techno-solutionism.
Multiple organisations, including DiGi (Twitter, Google, Facebook, LinkTree), Electronic Frontiers Australia, Digital Rights Watch AU, Scarlet Alliance and Freedom United have raised concerns about the powers that have been created and granted to the eSafety Commissioner as a part of the introduction of the Online Safety Act (hereafter, ‘The Act’).
DiGi has raised that the eSafety Commissioner’s current allowance of certain types of content like fetish practises to remain online is inconsistent with the wording of the Online Safety Act, leaving room for varying interpretations in other areas of the legislation and confusion for companies trying to comply.
If big tech with millions of dollars in funding and access to the best talent are confused by these regulations, how do we or any small business stand a chance?
At the end of the day, the national legal system is an imperialist invention that upholds white supremacist ideals designed to oppress and disenfranchise marginalised communities.
The ability to exist offline was a hard won fight from our collective Elders who were just trying to survive. We face the same fight online and we are actively having our human rights trampled on. We are being denied our digital citizenship and humanity.
Due to the constant sexualisation and fetishisation of LGBTQIA+ existence, the tools that are purported to protect children and young people online are causing more harm through the normalisation of surveillance and censorship.
The Online Safety Act was passed prior to a review of the Privacy Act being conducted. Any changes to the Privacy Act will change the legal interpretation of the Online Safety Act. This unfairly increases the burden of maintaining compliance with the Act which is inherently vague.
Even the eSafety commissioner has described the Act as a ‘sausage which is still being made’, which has us wondering - what else is in the sausage?
The Act relies on outdated standards which were developed before homosexuality was fully decriminalised in Austraila, and we still see the chilling effects of the code today.
Unlike the United States of America, ‘Australia does not have any blanket protections of free speech like the First Amendment, or a Section 230 analog protecting platforms from liability for third-party uploads.
Whilst we could explain how vague and harmful this legislation is to Assembly Four and, in turn, to Switter, instead we want to amplify the voices of the organisations that were ignored and dismissed during this supposedly ‘democratic process’:
Scarlet Alliance - Electronic Frontiers Australia - Freedom United
Wikimedia - Digital Rights Watch - AccessNow
Twitter’s submission to the Online Safety Bill exposure draft consultation highlighted the importance of anonymous and pseudonymous speech. This is fundamental to the development and sustainability of democratic societies, and must be protected in order for citizens to speak truth to power.
There are substantial efforts being directed towards legislating platforms to collect forms of identification which are government issued or linked to ID for age assurance and anti-harassment measures, despite the evidence that suggests this will increase harm against marginalised communities.
We know from previous attempts to collect identification information for the purpose of preventing access to pornograpahy that it is a royal clusterfuck. Enacted and proposed policies such as Social Media (Anti-Trolling) Bill 2021 and the UK’s Online Safety Bill 2021 that attempt to deanonymise or decloak users by stealth under the guise of online safety is just surveillance and censorship in a trench coat.
In reference to the “anti-trolling” bill, the Law Council of Australia has stated that “defamation law is likely to be a relatively ineffective mechanism for seeking individual reputational redress and for reducing trolling activity on social media” and even the eSafety Commissioner worried about could be used.
Human rights activists are feeling the chilling effects of politicians who are weaponising existing defamation legislation against politically active citizens, such as Shane Bazzi who lost a case initiated by the current Australian Defence Minister, former Minister for Home Affairs and is currently appealing the decision.
Noelle Martin claims that the Social Media (Anti-Trolling) Bill is “not worthy of its name” and “utterly inaccessible for those who suffer the most profound harms facilitated by the internet. Without major ratifications to the bill it is a narrowly-targeted reform that will only strengthen the hands of already powerful individuals. It is not a bill for the safety of everyday Australians.”
Even the Attorney-General’s Department has stated that the anti-trolling bill is really about “only defamation” and wasn’t intended to address the broader issues of harm online facing the Australian public.
Over the last decade, we have seen a number of attacks on Encryption through private campaigns like No Place to Hide in the UK and through government attempts at legislation like EARN IT in the US and the Identify and Disrupt Bill in Australia.
Encryption is more than just a green padlock or a thing that protects you from third-parties taking a peek into your private messages and data. Encryption is what keeps your banking details safe, it's what protects survivors, activists and journalists from having their messages read, it's what keeps our data out of the hands of threat actors such as governments looking to cause us reputational and offline harm.
In an ideal world, Switter would never have needed to exist. Assembly Four longs for the day where Sex Workers are treated as equal citizens; offline and online.
Society has become apathetic and disengaged in the political process, which stems from a place of immense privilege. If history can teach us anything, it’s the importance of protecting anonymous and pseudonymous speech, ultimately, it’s fundamental to the development and sustainability of democratic societies, and must be protected in order for citizens to speak truth to power.
We are Sex Workers and allies ourselves, so we understand the fear and uncertainty of operating under these legislative frameworks. We have put our own lives, and the lives of our friends and family, at risk by running these platforms and fighting against proposed legislative changes.
In order to have a thriving democratic society, we need to be able to criticise and hold government and policy makers to account without fear of reprisal.
This is about our democracy and our ability to exist online. We need to be taking action against the normalisation of surveillance and consider the legacy that we’re leaving future generations.
Assembly Four is not going anywhere; we will to continue to stand up for Human Rights.
We’re begging you to please pay attention. Please raise awareness. Please organise offline. Please voice your concerns to your representatives.
Here are some of the resources and active campaigns, which you can support now:
Australia
Electronic Frontiers Australia
Digital Rights Watch Australia
Scarlet Alliance
United States
NO EARNIT ACT
Free Speech Coalition
SWOP USA
UK Online Safety Bill
Save Online Speech Coalition
Open Rights Group
Thank you for your support over the years, it has meant the world. Please find our user statement which has links to resources on migrating away from Switter.
Assembly Four is a collective of sex workers and technologists founded in 2017, based out of Naarm, Australia. Assembly Four actively engages in policy, research, and development with a focus on the chilling effects that come from vague and rushed legislation aimed at regulating technology, much of which is surveillance and censorship in a trenchcoat.
Assembly Four aims to help bridge the gap between the people who create the technology, the people who regulate and legislate it, and the marginalised communities that have to endure the unprecedented consequences of caraceral capitalism that these types of policies enable.
