Is WhatsApp banning sex worker accounts?

Two months ago, 34-year-old Alice — who is using a pseudonym to protect her identity — needed to call her mum during work hours. She pulled up WhatsApp to make the call, but found that all her messages, contacts, images, voice notes — everything she'd stored on the app for around six years — had disappeared. In its place was an error message: "This account cannot currently use WhatsApp."

An in-person sex worker, Alice always uses WhatsApp to communicate — both with clients and her friends and family — while she's on the clock, because the app's encryption feature helps her feel safe. "It also means I can rely on my mobile data to make internet calls if I'm ever working in an area with bad signal." 

But this time, she couldn't check in with them. "This is how I communicate while I'm on a job that can sometimes be quite dangerous," she explains. "I was fine this time, but what if I hadn't been?" 

The sex crackdown 

WhatsApp is owned by Meta, and over the last few years, we've watched Meta's other platforms, like Instagram, "crack down" on removing sexual content from the platform, which involved sex workers, educators, and other creators seeing their accounts shadowbanned or deleted. 

Alice is one of those creators. As a cam girl and escort who provides in-person sex services and promotes those services online, she says she's "no stranger to being removed from social media platforms."

"It's unfortunately part of the territory [with sex work]. I post explicit things on my Instagram and Twitter sometimes. Usually it's all harmless and tongue-in-cheek. To be honest, I think it's pretty subtle and it's just a way of advertising my services, but Instagram doesn't like it," she explains, shrugging as she tells me she's been banned from Instagram "at least three times." 

WhatsApp error message that states this user is "violating [its] Commerce Policy." Credit: Screenshot via WhatsApp

Now, it seems WhatsApp could be following in a similar direction, with Mashable speaking to a handful of sex workers who claim their WhatsApp accounts have disappeared abruptly and without warning over the last six months. Some haven't even received notices that they're violating any community guidelines or terms of service, unlike those that have previously been reported to be part of Instagram bans. None of the sex workers who spoke to Mashable have received a reason for their ban either, nor have they successfully appealed it. 

Something about being banned from WhatsApp felt more personal to Alice than her previous Meta bans, saying she felt "upset and scared" — and she's not alone. 

33-year-old sex worker Reed Thomas-Litman, who is also one-half of the sex influencer duo Come Curious, was also banned from WhatsApp recently, leaving her feeling angry, anxious, and like her life and work had been upended. She's been banned from Instagram 17 times, but the removal from WhatsApp was particularly "devastating" for her.

A couple of months ago, Reed woke up and went to do her usual morning scroll through her WhatsApp chats, but found that she was unable to access the app at all. She received a similar error message as Alice: "[phone number] cannot currently use WhatsApp because it's violating our Commerce Policy." 

The Commerce Policy on WhatsApp does note that adult services aren't allowed to be sold or promoted on the platform, but this policy only applies to business accounts — which Reed says she didn't have. "I previously had a business account but this one was a personal account," she says. 

But Reed wasn't communicating with clients over WhatsApp nor using it to sell or advertise her services, but to simply communicate with other sex workers. 

Losing a digital lifeline 

Reed set up a group chat of sex workers, which she lost access to along with all of her personal information, contacts, and images; this was an important source of support in her life. "It was a lifeline for me, something where I could be like, 'I'm not getting much work at the moment, how is everyone else doing?' or just a place to check in with how people are feeling and be there for each other through bad mental health patches," she explains. 

Reed adds, "There was nothing in that group that was illegal. We didn't even plan meet-ups. We weren't talking about creating a fucking brothel together. There shouldn't have been anything in that group that would have got us banned. Sex work is literally legal in England!"

Sex work is technically legal in the UK, but English Collective of Prostitutes spokesperson Laura Watson notes that due to causing and inciting laws, group chats like these are criminalised. This means that sex workers merely communicating with one another via a group chat is actually an arrestable offence. Just helping another sex worker with their website, or with language, can be considered causing and inciting, akin to setting up a brothel, or trafficking. The criminalisation of sex work in the UK also doesn't help with social media bans, especially when it comes to group chats. 

The English Collective of Prostitutes is a grassroots organisation of sex workers and supporters campaigning for sex work decriminalisation, who also do case work for sex workers facing legal problems.

Mashable reached out to Meta for comment, and a WhatsApp spokesperson said, "Based on the limited information we've been told, there's no reason for us to think these accounts should have been banned. Had we been provided with more information, we could've reviewed any action that may have been taken to make sure that we've not made a mistake." 

Unfortunately, the further information the WhatsApp team requested from Mashable was the personal phone numbers of the sex workers interviewed in this piece. As this would compromise our sources' anonymity and, by extension, their safety, Mashable made the decision not to share this information with WhatsApp. We shared this reasoning with the WhatsApp team, but they said that without the phone numbers of the sources, it is "not technically possible to look into this any further."

Watson says WhatsApp is crucial to sex workers helping one another. 

"Many women who are sex workers...are sharing information through WhatsApp, and their network [which keeps them safe] is on WhatsApp groups. Many migrant women in our network use WhatsApp groups with other women from their country for solidarity or sharing tips, or just for people to talk to so they are not alone," Watson explains.

She adds, "WhatsApp groups are also used by sex workers so that they can confide in other women as, often, not many people in a sex worker's life will know they are a sex worker, including friends and family, so people on the WhatsApp groups can often be your main support network at work."

How encrypted is WhatsApp?

Many sex workers are confused by the WhatsApp bans because of the app's encryption. "I don't understand how WhatsApp can even see that we're sex workers if they're not able to see our messages," Alice tells me. 

WhatsApp describes the app as end-to-end encrypted, adding in their help centre that "end-to-end encryption ensures only you and the person you're communicating with can read or listen to what is sent, and nobody in between, not even WhatsApp." 

However, a spokesperson for Meta told Mashable that group chat titles and display names aren't encrypted, and that these are sometimes used to flag illegal activity with their moderation team. In addition, a white paper from WhatsApp on how end-to-end encryption works also specifies that encryption works by locking messages away with "keys" WhatsApp themselves don't have access to, unless you're on a business account. Those ones, they can access.

But the copy on WhatsApp's homepage — the section most users will be more likely to read than the fine print — says, "With end-to-end encryption, your personal messages and calls are secured. Only you and the person you're talking to can read or listen to them, and nobody in between, not even WhatsApp," and that sounds like everything will be locked down. 

Reed worries that the group chat she set up, which was titled "the sex worker hustle" may have been the reason behind her ban, especially since other sex workers in the same group were banned too, and within two months of the group's creation. Meta also wouldn't confirm this without phone numbers.  

23-year-old sex worker Danielle — who is also using a pseudonym to protect her identity —  tells Mashable her WhatsApp account was deleted suddenly at the end of October.

Like Reed, she lost all her media, phone numbers, and chat history, which became a serious problem for her. "Some of my clients lost content they'd paid for [which had been exchanged over WhatsApp]," she explains. "Luckily [clients] were nice about it and said I could send some more content soon but this could have put me in a really awful position if [clients] weren't nice." 

This isn't the only way Danielle's safety has been impacted by the ban. "My WhatsApp was attached to an old phone number I wasn't using anymore, and that was really helpful because it made me feel comfortable to share that number with clients, and then WhatsApp is the only place they can talk to me. They can't ring me in the middle of the day when I'm working my normal job," she explains.  

"It's affecting my safety because I don't have the money right now to get a spare phone with another number but I can't miss out on the regular payments and jobs clients give me," Danielle adds. "Now I'd have to message all my regulars with my actual number before I've had time to vet them. It's actually really scary." 

She adds that she also used WhatsApp as part of that vetting process, always asking other sex workers if they'd worked with certain people before and whether she needed to be aware of anything. 

Laws leaving sex workers unprotected 

Watson explains that the safety risks of WhatsApp banning sex workers go even further than losing their network or income. She says many women who've come to the collective for help after experiencing legal trouble or even being physically harmed by a client found the service through WhatsApp networks. 

And many emergency helplines offered by different grassroots organisations and unions where sex workers can call for similar emergency help are even hosted on WhatsApp directly — most likely because of the encryption feature.  

Watson stresses that this is exactly why the collective is against both causing and inciting laws, and any kind of crackdown on sex worker network groups from tech giants like Meta, as group chats are "crucial" for sex workers to get support, help and advice. 

"Sex workers shouldn't have to work in complete isolation, not only because it's dangerous but because there's no other job where you'd be expected to do that," Watson says.

The Meta bans and the laws (or lack thereof) underlining it come at a time where anti-sex sentiment is on the rise, especially online. The UK's Online Safety Bill and the U.S. FOSTA-SESTA bills push sex workers offline at best and directly endanger them at worst. 

This anti-sex culture war has serious effects on sex workers, who are at the very centre of the problem, yet so often sidelined. Reed adds, "I don't know what [sex workers] would do without online support. I don't know what I will do without that WhatsApp group. And yet, even when I spoke about the ban online, there were loads of people who felt that I deserved it, like, 'yeah you shouldn't be on WhatsApp.'" 

"It's so disheartening," she adds. "I have been treated like a criminal, and I haven't done anything wrong."