We are pleased to announce the recent publication of a chapter in the new anthology Queer Data Studies by FIST Adjunct Research Faculty member Ryan Conrad. The chapter, titled “Generated Vulnerability: Male Sex Workers, Third-Party Platforms, and Data Security,” is a timely contribution to the fields of sexuality studies, data studies, and science and technology studies. Conrad and anthology editor Patrick Keilty are planning a roundtable on queer data practices as part of the Sexuality Studies Association’s annual meeting in June 2024 where they will discuss their contributions to this ground-breaking interdisciplinary publication.
Abstract
“Generated Vulnerability” reflects on the documented and possible further harms of the Rentboy.com data breach that resulted from computer seizures by the FBI and Homeland Security in their 2015 raid of Rentboy’s offices. This chapter continues by investigating the strategies (or lack thereof) put in place by the owners of Rentmen.com to prevent similar data breaches as detailed in their data privacy and terms of service statements. Lastly, this chapter examines the data privacy strategies of online advertising platforms facilitated by sex worker-owned cooperatives like Ottawa Independent Companions (OIC) in order to contrast this hyper-local, democratic, collaborative, and demonstrably more secure data privacy model against faceless revenue-hungry transnational corporations making a killing off sex workers with little accountability to the very workers they claim to be supporting through their online advertising service.