If Decentralised Social Media Promises Freedom from Censorship, Why Aren't Sex Workers Moving There? SXFestival Expo 2026
Insights from interviews conducted at Berlin's SXFestival Expo 2026
by Margeaux Vitre
Methodology
This article draws on semi-structured interviews conducted by Repro Uncensored with creators, performers, dating platform representatives and other participants at SXFestival Expo in Berlin in July 2026. Interviews explored experiences of online censorship, platform dependency and attitudes towards decentralised social media.
If anyone should be embracing decentralised social media, it is sex workers.
For years, they have lived at the sharp end of online moderation. Instagram accounts disappear overnight without clear explanation, while appeals are often buried deep within help centres. Educational posts about BDSM are flagged as explicit content because of broadly defined "sexual indicators." Creators build audiences numbering in the hundreds of thousands, only to maintain backup accounts in anticipation that the next suspension could erase years of work.
On paper, decentralised social media appears to offer exactly what they have been waiting for. Protocols such as the AT Protocol, which powers Bluesky, allow users to move their identity, followers and posting history between compatible platforms instead of starting from scratch. Users have greater choice over moderation services, algorithmic feeds and compatible applications, reducing dependence on a single platform's opaque moderation decisions. The promise is simple: more transparency, more control and less reliance on the rules of Big Tech.
Yet at Berlin's SXFestival Expo, that promise was met largely with indifference.
After asking creators whether they had experienced online censorship, we asked them a second question: could decentralised social media finally offer a way out?
Almost nobody thought so.
Mx_Maven, a dominatrix whose Instagram account has been suspended several times, showed little enthusiasm when platforms such as Bluesky or Blacksky were mentioned. Instead, she has gradually shifted away from mainstream social media, relying more heavily on Telegram to communicate directly with her community.
Representatives from the kinky dating app Fet described a similar sense of frustration with Instagram's moderation practices. After Instagram penalised the company's account following an educational campaign about kink, they chose not to invest further in growing their own social media presence. Instead, they now focus on partnerships with creators who already have established audiences.
Others cope by making bittersweet jokes about becoming Meta's model student. After losing her main Instagram account, model, coder and consultant Pauline Schmiechen channelled her frustration into a parody backup account, @generalpaulinski2, jokingly presenting herself as the perfect student of Meta's Community Standards. Her original account has since been restored, and together with Paulita Pappel she now co-hosts the German-speaking podcast Pauli2, which explores relationships and dating as a sex worker.
The creators we met had not abandoned mainstream platforms. They had adapted to them, or in some cases shifted towards messaging apps and private communities. That adaptation may help explain why decentralised social media has struggled to gain traction among creators despite addressing many of their frustrations.
"As creators, we're already everywhere," said Dolce, an Italian creator active on OnlyFans and Stripchat. "For me to add your platform to my Linktree, it has to be perfect."
Her comment points to a challenge that decentralised social media alone cannot solve.
Creators do not simply use platforms to speak; they use them to be discovered. Their businesses already span Instagram, Telegram, OnlyFans, Stripchat and numerous other services. Every additional platform represents another audience to cultivate, another workflow to maintain and another place to direct followers. Unless a new platform can deliver clients, visibility or income, portability and transparent moderation become secondary concerns.
As Pauline put it, "Everybody already has their eggs in different baskets. If you have no traffic, you have zero chance."
This raises a broader question about the future of decentralised social media.
Most decentralised projects have been built around user autonomy. They seek to give people greater control over moderation, algorithms and online identity. But creators are not ordinary users. Their success depends less on controlling their online experience than on attracting attention within it. Reach, discoverability and recommendation remain the currencies of the creator economy.
Sex workers have historically been among the first communities to experience the unintended consequences of platform governance. Long before content moderation became a mainstream political debate, they were already navigating opaque algorithms, inconsistent enforcement and repeated account removals.
Their reluctance to embrace decentralised social media suggests that escaping Big Tech is not simply a technical challenge. It is also an economic one.
A more accountable social media ecosystem may be possible. However, unless it can also offer creators an audience, it may struggle to persuade them to leave the platforms they know, even when those platforms repeatedly push them to the margins.
At the same time, protocols such as the AT Protocol significantly lower the barriers to building new social platforms. This raises an important question for the future: can decentralised ecosystems develop sustainable economic models that allow creators to thrive without relying on surveillance-based advertising or opaque recommendation systems? If they can, decentralisation may become more than a governance alternative. It may become a genuine alternative for the creator economy itself.
Main takeaways
Despite widespread frustration with online censorship, interest in decentralised social media remains low.
Rather than migrating to decentralised platforms, many creators are shifting towards messaging apps, dating apps and private communities.
Backup accounts, self-censorship and coded language have become normalised survival strategies.
For creators, discoverability matters more than decentralisation.
Existing creator ecosystems are already highly diversified across Instagram, OnlyFans, Stripchat, Telegram and other services, making additional platforms difficult to justify.
Protocols such as the AT Protocol may solve problems of ownership and moderation, but they do not yet solve the problem of audience acquisition.
Unless decentralised platforms can deliver traffic, creator income and meaningful discovery mechanisms, adoption among creators is likely to remain limited.
See more from the visuals captured at Berlin's SXFestival Expo here