008: A Platform Named Desire

The history of the internet and of pornography are deeply intertwined, they mix and overlap that to see one without the other is to only capture half the picture. And the human desire for sex is often a desire that has driven the development of many of the technologies that underpin modern life. Sex workers have often been early adopters of digital technologies, but sex workers don’t just take advantage of technology, they are part of driving their creation and uptake.

In this episode of the Fairwork podcast we speak to Dr Heather Berg, an Academic and writer based in Washington state. Our conversation, recorded last year, looks at the platformisation of sex work, the radical restructuring of the porn industry that this has brought about, and the changing workplace conditions that platforms like OnlyFans have ushered in for workers.

For the introduction of this episode I took a lot of influence from this great website which I highly recommend you check out as it has loads of great articles and archive materials about sex workers early adoption and development of internet technologies: https://sexworkersbuilttheinter.net/

There's also this great article by Gabrielle Garcia and it was a lecture by Gabrielle that initially put me on to the story of Danni's Hard drive: https://decodingstigma.substack.com/p/cybernetic-sex-worker

Heather's book Porn Work is out now - definitely check it out as she's not just a brilliant speaker, but writer too: https://uncpress.org/book/9781469661926/porn-work/

For the academics in the room, I'd also highly recommend this great article by Dr Kate Hardy: https://read.dukeupress.edu/south-atlantic-quarterly/article-abstract/120/3/533/174127/Hustling-the-PlatformCapitalist-Experiments-and?redirectedFrom=fulltext

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.