Seeking Arrangement, Amazon, Twitter, TikTok, Among Top Contributors to Sexual Exploitation in America
Washington, DC (February 6, 2020) – The National Center on Sexual Exploitation today announced its 2020 Dirty Dozen List, a list of mainstream entities that are major facilitators of sexual exploitation in the United States. Watch the video announcement at DirtyDozenList.com. The Dirty Dozen List is a highly successful tool to this end, already changing culture with more than 50 policy changes at major corporations.
“In 2020, it is intolerable for a mainstream company or entity to facilitate, profit from, or normalize sexual exploitation—and that’s why the Dirty Dozen List exists,” said Haley McNamara, Vice President of Advocacy and Outreach at the National Center on Sexual Exploitation. “This list ensures that their promotion and collusion with sexual assault, sex trafficking, pornography, the eroticization of incest, and more, becomes public knowledge, and equips concerned citizens with information and tools to hold them accountable.”
“This year, for the first time ever, the Dirty Dozen List has become a Dirty ‘Baker’s Dozen’ List, with the addition of Wyndham hotels which are currently being sued by the National Center on Sexual Exploitation Law Center on behalf of a child sex trafficking survivor who was serially raped in these hotels,” McNamara added. The formal NCOSE statement on the lawsuit can be found here.
“Further, we call special attention to Seeking Arrangement, one of the largest pseudo-dating prostitution websites, with over 20 million members. Seeking Arrangement targets college students who struggle with student debt to be sexually accessible to socio-economically advantaged older men in exchange for money or gifts. This is essentially a business model of thinly veiled prostitution,” McNamara said.
“We are starting this year with an exciting victory as United Airlines has been removed from the 2019 Dirty Dozen List where it was previously listed due to improved training for flight crews regarding in-flight pornography-use. As confirmed to NCOSE by a United Airlines spokesperson, and United flight attendants, United has now begun training staff on how to respond to this disturbing new trend.” The formal NCOSE statement on this victory can be found here.
The 2020 Dirty “Baker’s Dozen” List:
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. As a media creator, Amazon Prime Video inserts unnecessary, gratuitous nudity and simulated sex scenes into many of its original programming, while providing faulty parental controls. Amazon S3 and Amazon Web Services are also host to thousands of hardcore violent pornography and prostitution websites. Learn more and take action: EndSexualExploitation.org/Amazon
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 responsibility to reject sexual exploitation rather than serving as a party and facilitator to it. 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. Learn more and take action: EndSexualExploitation.org/Google
Massage Envy: Massage Envy, the largest massage 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. Learn more and take action: EndSexualExploitation.org/MassageEnvy
Netflix: Netflix has become a staple of at-home entertainment with over 150 million users subscribing across the globe. Disturbingly, Netflix often produces media portraying gratuitous nudity, graphic sexual acts, and even graphic depictions of sexual assault. Despite this, 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+. Learn more and take action: EndSexualExploitation.org/Netflix
Nevada: Nevada is the only state in America with legalized brothel prostitution in select counties. As a result, Nevada has the largest illegal 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. Learn more and take action: EndSexualExploitation.org/Nevada
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. Learn more and take action: EndSexualExploitation.org/SeekingArrangement
Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue: Since 1964 this magazine has sexually objectified women for sport and profit. This magazine is sending a message that women’s bodies are for public consumption, and any retailer that displays and sells it is condoning the toxic culture of entitlement to the female body. Learn more and take action: EndSexualExploitation.org/SportsIllustrated
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” policy, the sexually exploitive games on Steam skyrocketed from 700 to over 3,900. Learn more and take action: EndSexualExploitation.org/Steam
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. Learn more and take action: EndSexualExploitation.org/TikTok
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. Learn more and take action: EndSexualExploitation.org/Twitter
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. Learn more and take action: EndSexualExploitation.org/Visa
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. Learn more and take action: EndSexualExploitation.org/Wish
Wyndham: Wyndham Hotels & Resorts, which also owns the hotel brand Super 8 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 (NCOSE) Law Center for facilitating underage sex trafficking. Learn more and take action: EndSexualExploitation.org/Wyndham
The Dirty Dozen List has a track record of uniting thousands of individual actions and targeting them to create monumental changes, such as:
- The two billion+ monthly active devices subscribing to Google Play are no longer able to download pornographic and sexually explicit apps through Google’s sanctioned online store;
- Over two million military service members now receive anti-sex trafficking training with the issue of pornography explained as a factor driving demand;
- Over one million Comcast customers now have the ability to block out pornographic content with improved parental controls and have access to new features promoting digital safety and preventing unintentional exposure to pornography; and many more.
- And more! See more victories here.