(New York, December 9, 2024) - Webcam models in Colombia report serious abuses by studios producing content for the billion-dollar adult webcam industry, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today. Models report unhygienic conditions, 18-hour shifts without breaks, and coercion to do sexual performances they find degrading, traumatizing, or physically painful.
The 175-page report, "'I Learned How to Say No': Labor Abuses & Sexual Exploitation in Colombian Webcam Studios," exposes working conditions in webcam studios in Bogotá, Cali, Medellín, and Palmira. Webcamming is a global industry where platforms keep between 50 and 65 percent of what viewers pay. Interviews revealed that studios retain as much as 70 percent of platform payouts, reducing workers' pay. Adult webcam platforms based in the United States and Europe should address labor abuses and sexual exploitation in Colombian webcam studios immediately.
"Sex workers deserve the same labor protections as all workers under international human rights law," said Erin Kilbride, researcher at Human Rights Watch and report author. "Webcam platforms have a responsibility to identify, mitigate, and prevent human rights abuses by studios."
In collaboration with sex worker rights organizations La Liga de Salud Trans and Corporación Calle 7 Colombia, Human Rights Watch researchers spent 18 months investigating adult webcam studios in Colombia. They interviewed 55 sex workers with experience in the industry.
Workers reported streaming from small cubicles lacking ventilation and infested with bedbugs and cockroaches. Some identified verbal, physical, and sexual abuse by studio management and coercion to perform non-consensual sex acts. Labor conditions included wage theft; fines for eating or bathroom breaks; equipment covered with bodily fluids; resulting rashes; infections; lack of mental health support.
A transgender Bolivian woman who worked at a studio in Bogotá stated that when she asked her manager to end a painful performance due to extreme pain: "[he] said if I stop I will hurt the rating so I had to keep going."
Most models expressed desires to save money for their own equipment to stream from home but faced difficulties as studios often refused account control transfer. This forced them to start anew if they left.
While all interviewees were adults several reported beginning work as children due to studio practices violating age restrictions by "recycling" accounts registered previously under adults' names.
"Forty-nine of fifty models interviewed had neither seen nor signed terms of service from any platform on which they streamed," leaving them without essential information about fair payment or informed decisions regarding work hours or client requests leading some into wage theft sexual coercion labor exploitation situations by studios.
Models indicated that managers used threats of account bans or decreased traffic pressure forcing long hours without food/water performing non-consensual sex acts.
Platform Responses
Human Rights Watch reviewed policies from BongaCams Chaturbate LiveJasmin Stripchat common among interviewees finding these platforms may need more extensive human rights due diligence protocols addressing risks related occupational health safety sanitation working conditions within studios.
BongaCams Chaturbate Stripchat provided steps identifying preventing human trafficking child sexual abuse denying responsibility other labor abuses occurring within supply chains such as unhygienic conditions denial right rest responses annexed report LiveJasmin declined respond record.All models chosen webcamming not forced coerced surprised deceived misled employment conditions including pay expected sex acts sanitation inability take accounts compounded debt accrued made difficult leave. Human Rights Watch does not call criminalizing industry instead works organizations defenders identifying concrete steps platforms government address root out exploitation. Platforms power responsibility review implement comprehensive standards based expertise themselves.