Hacking//Hustling

Hacking//Hustling formed in 2018 as a community response to FOSTA-SESTA and the shuttering of Backpage. We grew into a network of sex workers, survivors, and accomplices working to redefine technologies toward uplifting survival strategies that build safety without prisons or policing. Born out of crisis organizing, we have spent the past few years learning to value slowing down and prioritizing care. We have prioritized rest, and recovery –and finding out, continuously, what these words look like in practice. With this space, we have continued to show up as our full selves, focus on healing and made the intentional and thoughtful decision that the time has come to sunset Hacking//Hustling. Our goal with Hacking//Hustling was always to disrupt institutions, and part of that is knowing when to sunset, allow the work to take other forms, and support each other in new life pursuits. A community organization should not be a capitalist formation that is always seeking expansion in the name of expansion, and at the expense and exploitation of its members. Hacking//Hustling has created community, a body of work, and a space for disparate projects to be housed. We can create these spaces while remembering that ultimately those spaces exist for and are made up of people, and that there will come a time for that work to transform and iterate. The act of sunsetting prioritizes people over institutions and organizations. Sunsetting is a reminder of the values of our non-productive labor time, and ultimately our health, our joy, our value without titles. Sunsetting is a reminder that we cannot work without rest. But we know that work never ends when an organization sunsets. It ripples outward, with people taking lessons learned into other formations and projects. We encourage everyone to follow Data 4 Black Lives, Digital Defense Fund, T4Tech, Decoding Stigma, Kink Out, Safer Movements Collective, the Support Ho(s)e Collective, and Veil Machine and continue making space for cross-movement conversations, and skill sharing across causes for bodily autonomy. Our Struggles are interconnected and our freedom is bound up in one another’s. Link in bio, dear comrades.

Today is International Sex Workers’ Rights Day, and we’re observing today in part by sharing a series of conversations between our core collective members in the U.S. and comrades in Senegal, West Africa. We discuss every day lived experiences of criminalization, sex work, and community organizing. We listened, learned and shared with the help of a translator, Juliana Friend, whose participation was supported by the Alternative Digital Futures Project at the Center for Long-Term Cybersecurity (CLTC) at UC Berkeley. These tiles are excerpts from those conversations. For the complete transcripts in English, French and Wolof, visit the link below: tinyurl.com/H2Senegal #iswrd #internationalsexworkersrightsday #iswrd2025 #listentosexworkers #senegal #decrimnow #globaldecrim #solidarity #March3 #3Mars

Sex work is work. We joined the ACLU to file a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) against MasterCard’s discriminatory policies! Tell Mastercard: End discriminatory policies against online sex workers. See the link on our story! [ID blue text on pink background that says “Tell MasterCard: Stop discriminating against online sex workers.” ACLU logo is on the bottom]

Reposting from @zahrastardust // Our latest collaborative publication! // I'm so excited to share this article, High Risk Hustling, on financial discrimination against c3x werkers, the result of some very generative collaboration with the brilliant folks at @hackinghustling and @decodingstigma who I met through my fellowship at @bkcharvard . We spent 2 years on Zoom across different time zones talking about how the policies of payment processors are influenced by a long history of racial capitalism, racial discrimination in credit lending, undervaluing feminised labour, the wars on terror and trafficking, attempts to address CSAM/non-consensual intimate imagery, and a total lack of cultural competency in understanding sexual labour. As a result, fintech's refusal to provide services to seggs-related businesses affects not just cex werkers but sex ed material, harm reduction services and mutual aid organising. Payment processors take the most restrictive laws and apply them as global standards even in jurisdictions where sw is decriminalised. Old issues of stigma and discrimination are now accelerated by the privatisation of platforms and the advent of algorithmic profiling to identify 'suspicious activity' and predict risk. It is no accident, no aberration, no glitch. It is discrimination by design. And it impacts people both online and offline, increasing vulnerability to violence and poverty, gatekeeping wealth, and leading to an ecosystem marked by predatory commissions. It was such an honour to learn from and work alongside @missblunt.nyc @stabriella @mxloreleilee Kate D'Adamo and @_kuolabear as part of this process. We hope this piece will be useful for advocacy and accountability. Link in bio - please share, use, cite and build from. This is just one part of an international movement to end financial discrimination. #creditcardprocessing #paymentprocessing #decrimnow

Incredibly excited for this virtual toolkit launch of "Supporting Sex Workers & Survivors: Lessons for Defense Campaigns" with the Support Ho(s)e Collective and Survived & Punished! The #SWToolkit features insights and lessons learned from some of our comrades and shared communities! Join us, December 8th at 6PM ET: bit.ly/SWToolkit Closed Captioning is available via zoom!

💥 NEW paper published today in Disability Studies Quarterly (DSQ) Vol. 42 Issue No. 2: “Disabled Sex Workers’ Fight for Digital Rights, Platform Accessibility, and Design Justice” by Emily Coombes, Ariel Wolf, Danielle Blunt, and Kassandra Sparks 💥 Link in my bio! We’re excited to share this paper with our academic and sex worker community research networks. We’re looking forward to watching how it gets used, disseminated, and critiqued. There’s so much we couldn’t say that still needs to be said. Peer-review isn’t everything but I’m thankful for this opportunity and am stoked to still be writing. Also incredibly grateful for each of my co-authors who made the writing process possible and held me up as a contributor even when at my lowest. 🖤 Image Description in comments.

There are so many people and organizations creating against systems and agents of surveillance. The DDF has a robust (and ever growing list) of external resources to learn from! Check out these helpful links (click on “external resources” or scroll to the bottom of the “learn” page)! All links in our story highlights!

Today we’re sharing about device encryption! From the DDF: “Disc encryption protects your data, even if your device is lost or stolen. Encryption uses complex math to scramble your data. In order to use the code to unscramble the data, you need a private key. In most cases, this is a password you set. If you lose an encrypted device or if it is stolen or confiscated, the contents will be meaningless without your passcode.” Access the full guide via the link in our stories/DDF highlights.

The pigeon is back! Today's DDF resource is "Cybersecurity with Pigeon: Confidential Browsing Zine" which tackles questions like, "How can I prevent others from knowing what websites I'm going to?" Read online or download the zine at the link in the related highlights/stories!

4 Things SWers Can Teach Us About Digital Surveillance "Digital evidence is and will continue to be used to prosecute abortion and miscarriages," including emails, location tracking, and search histories. Linking to the article in our stories! Excerpt: With the Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade, reproductive justice activists are fearful about what this will mean for the digital privacy of people seeking abortion services, providers, and advocates. Without any federal protections, states will continue to criminalize abortions, and our digital footprints can and will be used against us. In our present reality, our devices and apps are constantly collecting personal information about us, and we often have no control over where this data gets shared. Mass digital surveillance is a threat to all of us, but especially for the most marginalized and vulnerable to criminalization. The criminal cases against Purvi Patel and Latice Fisher show how women of color are targeted for their reproductive choices and miscarriages—and how their digital data can be used to criminalize them. In 2013, when Patel went to the hospital for bleeding after a claimed miscarriage, she was arrested and her texts were used to charge her with feticide and child neglect. In 2017, when Fisher’s pregnancy ended in a stillbirth at home, her internet searches were used to charge her with second-degree murder. These cases show how digital surveillance is already being weaponized against pregnant people for their reproductive outcomes. And as abortion is increasingly criminalized and our digital privacy becomes less secure, these cases will become more commonplace.

Back to resource sharing and today’s DDF guide is protest safety focused!! From the “Protest Safety Tips to Guard Against Surveillance” guide’s intro: These tips are not a substitute for professional legal advice, or your own personal expertise with your work and your community. This guide covers topics like: What threats might you face at a protest, Protest prep (for you and your electronic devices) and What to expect/plan for once at a demonstration!

Thanks to everyone for the resource shares! Today's Digital Defense Fund resource is about Virtual Private Networks (VPNs), they encrypt your traffic and hide your IP address. This guide will tell you everything you need to know about VPNs! Direct link on our stories/highlights!