Sweden further cracks down on sex workers: What it means for digital rights

Sweden expands criminalisation and surveillance of sex workers

On 20 May 2025, the Swedish Parliament voted to adopt Proposition 2024/25:124, a legislative package that, among other things, expands Sweden’s criminalisation of sex work to include the purchase of sexual acts performed remotely. This includes webcamming, erotic video creation, and other forms of digital sex work, a move that will have chilling effects both nationally and internationally. EDRi affiliate European Sex Workers Rights Alliance (ESWA) and Red Umbrella Sweden responded with a joint statement.

Sweden claims to protect sex workers but ignores evidence-based opposition from the community and other experts

While framed as a measure to combat exploitation, this legislation represents a dangerous misunderstanding of both digital labour and the realities of sex work. The Swedish government maintains that sex workers themselves are not criminalised under the so-called ‘Swedish Model’, where clients of sex workers are criminalised while sex workers are supposedly not.

However, this distinction is legalistic at best, deeply and purposefully misleading in practice. When the purchase of a service is criminalised, the service provider – in this case, the sex worker – is inevitably harmed. Clients become fearful, harder to screen and more secretive, making working conditions for sex workers riskier. Income becomes unstable, and the burden of legal risk and surveillance often shifts onto workers themselves.

Digital sex work, including webcamming and subscription-based content platforms, has become a vital lifeline for many sex workers, particularly those facing discrimination or exclusion in other forms of employment. LGBTQI+ individuals, migrants, people with disabilities and others already living at the margins have found digital sex work to be more accessible, safer and self-directed. The COVID-19 pandemic made this especially clear: as in-person services disappeared overnight due to pandemic restrictions, online platforms became a crucial source of survival. This trend continues today.

But the harms of this proposal do not stop at the individual level. The law also extends the crime of “pimping” (koppleri) to anyone who facilitates or benefits economically from remote sexual services. This expansion has dangerous implications. This expansion of criminalisation to remote sexual services, while not creating new enforcement powers, depends on identifying buyers, and as such, is going to further encourage invasive and disproportionate policing practices targeting sex workers and their relatives, friends or partners for simply sharing household expenses or living together. It is particularly concerning for those already over-policed and surveilled such as migrants, trans people, racialised communities, who are likely to be the first targets of such expanded criminalisation.

The parliamentary debate on 19 May, preceding the vote, did not account for any of these nuances. Instead, it laid bare an uncomfortable truth: this legislation was never about protecting those it claims to defend. Rather than engaging with the perspectives of sex workers and the overwhelming international and domestic opposition to the bill, several Swedish Members of Parliament (MPs) chose to patronise, belittle, and erase those voices entirely.

Particularly troubling was the rhetoric from members of the Social Democrats, Sweden Democrats, and the Left Party, who repeated tired tropes of victimhood and moral decay. One especially egregious moment came from Left Party MP Gudrun Nordborg, who mentioned the “flood of messages” she received from sex workers, academics and human rights organisations, and argued that people with a background in sex work couldn’t possibly articulate their realities so clearly. According to her, massive amounts of emails that she received must have been written by pimps. This is a profound expression of classism, ignorance and contempt. In this debate, the Parliament didn’t just reject science-backed evidence, it rejected the idea that sex workers could even participate meaningfully in a democratic process. That is a far more disturbing indictment than the vote itself.

Lessons from FOSTA/SESTA: Platforms don’t wait

Supporters of the law argue that it will not affect digital platforms based outside Sweden, due to the legal principle of double criminality. While this may limit direct liability in theory, it does nothing to prevent collateral harm. In practice, platforms respond conservatively to legal ambiguity. After FOSTA/SESTA was introduced in the United States in 2018, even platforms based abroad moved to ban adult content and deplatform sex workers to avoid any potential liability. Today, even in countries where sex work is decriminalised, such as Belgium, New Zealand, and Australia, social media and payment platforms continue to censor and exclude sex workers.

Sweden’s proposed law sends a clear message to platforms: there are legal risks if they host sex workers. As a result, companies may geoblock Swedish users, restrict payouts, increase moderation or close accounts preemptively. This has already begun. OnlyFans, for instance, has a track record of banning users based on location and enforcing unclear morality policies. Swedish sex workers report being shadow-banned and losing access to their accounts with no explanation beyond suspicion. The ambiguity of this law, including undefined concepts like “inducement” or “main purpose” (“of the buyer was to participate in or view a sexual act”), only amplifies that risk, creating a moderation and liability nightmare for platforms that would rather err on the side of caution and thus, exclusion.

Digital rights organisations must show up in solidarity with sex workers

Digital rights organisations should pay close attention. This law sets a dangerous precedent for state intrusion into private digital expression and communication. It opens the door for governments to justify surveillance, platform policing and selective enforcement under the guise of moral or protective intentions. If a government can criminalise the facilitation of consensual online sexual expression, artistic freedom and work (even when it occurs in private digital spaces), it legitimises broader digital censorship that will extend to activists, LGBTQI+ communities, artists, journalists and beyond. The precedent of criminalising digital labour through vague and undefined terms threatens the principles of openness, privacy and autonomy that underpin the digital rights movement. What happens to sex workers today could very well happen to others tomorrow. Sex workers have been supporting digital rights campaigns and causes, due to strong belief in the importance of solidarity and acute awareness of the reality that of interconnected struggles.

It’s time for digital rights organisations to also pay attention and act in solidarity with sex workers.

The European Sex Workers’ Rights Alliance (ESWA) is deeply alarmed by the development in Sweden. With the support of over 1,600 organisations, including EDRi, and scholars, human rights expertsand individuals from all around the globe, ESWA issued an open letter and a campaign calling for the full withdrawal of this proposal. The Swedish Parliament chose to ignore this,despite the countless peer-reviewed studies produced over decades that have documented the harms of the Swedish Model on sex workers. ESWA believes that real protection comes not from criminalisation, but from community-led, evidence-based and rights-affirming policies. Governments must fully decriminalise sex work, online and offline, invest in voluntary support services, not coercive exit programmes, and must listen to the voices of those most affected.

Criminalisation of remote sexual services in Sweden may begin as a national law, but its consequences will not end at Sweden’s borders. It threatens to legitimise state surveillance of digital sexual expression, embolden censorship by platforms, and further marginalise already vulnerable communities across Europe.

The Swedish model reinforces stigma, not safety. It undermines rights, rather than protecting them.

Contribution by: Yigit Aydinalp, Senior Programme Officer, EDRi affiliate, ESWA & Kira Stellar, Member of the Board of Directors, EDRi affiliate, ESWA,  and the Chair of the Board of Directors, Red Umbrella Sweden.