Researched and Compiled by National Center on Sexual Exploitation
Seeking Arrangement:
Seeking Arrangement is one of the largest pseudo-dating prostitution (sometimes called “sugar baby”) websites, with over 20 million members. Seeking Arrangement prioritizes targeting college students who struggle with student debt to service socio-economically advantaged older men. This is a system of thinly veiled prostitution and therefore must be recognized as sexual exploitation.
TikTok:
With more than 500 million active users worldwide, TikTok is a social media video app increasingly popular among elementary and middle school-aged children. Due to a lack of moderation and meager safety controls, TikTok has facilitated a space for sexual grooming by abusers and sex traffickers.
Wish:
Wish is a retail shopping website and app regularly used by 500 million people, and it currently ranks as the #2 shopping app on the iPhone. Unfortunately, Wish’s meteoric rise in the world of retail rests on the sale of child-like sex dolls, spycams marketed for filming women nude without their permission, and misogynistic apparel featuring female nudity that minimizes women as two-dimension sex objects.
Massage Envy:
Massage Envy, the largest mas-sage chain in America, with more than 20,000 therapists and 1,200 locations, has been, and is being, sued by hundreds of women for failing to take appropriate measures when a massage therapist sexually harassed or assaulted a client. Among a number of poor policies, the company has hidden clauses in customer agreements that force women to surrender their rights. Massage Envy needs to stop silencing survivors and take real corporate responsibility.
Wyndham Hotels and Resorts:
Owns the Super 8 hotel brand among others, is a prominent hospitality chain with more than 9,000 hotels and resorts worldwide. Unfortunately, Wyndham also profits from exploitive on-demand pornography and is being sued by the National Center on Sexual Exploitation Law Center for facilitating underage sex trafficking.
Amazon:
Amazon, the world’s titan of e-commerce, logistics, data storage, and media, also peddles endless amounts of sexual exploitation. As an online retailer, Amazon is in the business of selling incest-themed porn, sex dolls, photography books with eroticized child nudity, pornographic magazines, and more. hardcore violent pornography and prostitution.
Google:
With 87% of the search engine market share world-wide and a vast network that touches the lives of nearly all people alive today. Google has a long list of problems to answer to, including: unfiltered Chromebooks exposing school children to hardcore porn, pedophiles networking on YouTube, pornographic results for educational search terms in Google Images, and concerning encryption efforts that could make identifying and prosecuting child abusers more difficult.
Netflix:
Netflix often produces media portraying gratuitous nudity, graphic sexual acts, and even graphic depictions of sexual assault. Netflix self-rates as suitable for ages 4+ on the Apple App Store. Netflix needs to stop normalizing and mainstreaming sexually graphic and violent entertainment, and until they do so they need to change their app rating to 17+.
Nevada:
Nevada is the only state in America with legalized brothel prostitution in select counties. As a result, Nevada has the largest commercial sex market in the country due to the increased demand for buying sex in this normalized atmosphere, abandoning many to be exploited in both prostitution and sex trafficking. While some may claim that legalization provides better regulation and increased safety, the truth is that sexual violence, racism, and socioeconomic disadvantages are inextricable from the prostitution experience.
Steam:
Steam is a popular gaming platform and store with over 90 million active users, and approximately 35 million users who are minors. The platform has hundreds of games that promote gratuitous sexual content, violence, and harassment. After implementing an “anything goes” pol-icy, the sexually exploitive games on Steam skyrocketed from 700 to over 3,900.
Twitter:
Twitter is used countless times daily to advertise prostituted persons and sex trafficking victims for purposes of commercial sexual exploitation, often via pornographic images or webcamming. In fact, media reports suggest that as many as 10 million Twitter accounts may include explicit sexual content, and meanwhile Twitter’s policies place virtually no limits on the perpetuation and amassing of this content.
Visa:
The credit card company/corporation Visa partners with the pornography industry by processing payments for pornography with themes of sexual violence, racism, incest, and the fetishization of minors. Other major payment systems, such as Paypal, have rejected profits from the sex industry by refusing to allow their system to be used by pornography websites. It’s time to hold Visa accountable.
To see the full list and dishonorable mentions visit: www.endsexualexploitation.org/dirtydozen-2020
