“When we talked to the employees, they just wanted to get back to the cockroaches, how the studio owner charges them for toilet paper or makes them work when they have their period. I couldn't get people to talk to me about platforms, and that's totally true because of course you're angry at the guy you know,” Killbride tells WIRED. “But there is a whole other layer that has remained completely invisible. This is a multi-billion dollar industry that has been able to apologize for being reprimanded.”
WIRED attempted to contact BongaCams, Chaturbate, LiveJasmin and Stripchat to request comment on the survey results. Nobody responded.
HRW's report outlines crucial recommendations for improving conditions at both studio and platform levels. This includes occupational safety standards for studios that are enforced through regular inspections. Models should be able to take breaks and receive a minimum wage for their work. Studio management may not force models to perform specific sexual acts, nor agree to perform any act on behalf of the models. In addition, models must have access to a confidential reporting mechanism so that they can notify law enforcement or other authorities of workplace violations.
Developing recommendations for the platforms themselves is even more nuanced. Killbride says most, if not all, popular adult streaming platforms have strict authentication requirements for account creation and specifically prohibit studio owners or anyone else from accepting terms of service on behalf of anyone else. In practice, however, the companies are not doing enough, HRW researchers argue, to offer terms of service in a simple, understandable format in several languages, including Spanish.
Platforms should also provide channels for content creators to report violations and respond in a timely manner, the researchers say. And, crucially, platforms must establish policies that allow models to own and transfer studios. Researchers found that the current status quo on many platforms has to do with policy language that can confuse users, or technical complications that prevent content creators from being able to claim ownership of their accounts.
Additionally, the stakes are particularly high when it comes to account ownership issues, as the researchers found that studios often use “recycled” accounts — accounts that have been verified and created by one camera and then retained by a studio — to circumvent minimum age requirements. and streaming child sexual abuse material.
“We found that even though the platforms are quite strict and have completely clear policies about not allowing children to stream, the studios still manage to hire and stream children using fake IDs or, more commonly, recycled accounts ” says Killbride. “Our research was all among adults, but many of the people we spoke to started streaming as children when they were 13 to 17 years old.”
Killbride emphasizes that the situation reflects an important principle of sex worker advocacy and labor reform in general: listening to workers about their needs and the protections that would help them do their work as effectively and equitably as possible also protects other vulnerable populations at the same time. In this case, by allowing cammers to monitor and transfer their accounts and followers, the adult streaming industry could also drastically reduce the prevalence of child sexual abuse material.
