The middleman in the sex trade industry, otherwise known as the pimp, is fast disappearing, thanks to technology.
Motherboard reported that sex trade workers in Hong Kong have discovered online forums as a way to get in touch with customers. Among the popular forums are HK Big Man and HK Mensa where “compensated dater” offer their services.
Young women in the industry often look through the advertisements, copy it, make some adjustments and post it with a contact number. A call leads to a negotiation where they will meet and the cost of sex. Besides keeping all the payments to themselves, the prostitutes are less prone to police arrest because of the difficulty of tracing their movements.
Phone transactions are preferred over chats because being traced by authorities becomes harder for workers in the flesh trade, said Bowie Lam Po-yee, who operates Teen’s Key, an organization which offers outreach for sex trade workers.
But most of the young girls who get clients via online forums do not consider themselves sex worker because most of them say it is a one-time or two-time thing. Based on Teen Key’s outreach work, Lam reckoned there are around 2,500 compensated daters in Hong Kong.
Because of the relative anonymity of online and phone-only transactions, police arrest from July 2015 to July 2016 was only 12 compensated daters. Also, Hong Kong laws ban solicitation of clients in public, but not in private.
Popular apps to get clients are WhatsApp and WeChat. Technology has also killed the business of karaoke brothels in Hong Kong since cyberspace is where the workers and their clients make a deal before they meet to have sex.
Afterdark reported that in Wan Chai, a number of the women engaged in sex trade are Filipinas in mini skirts or tight jeans, victims of illegal recruiters who promise them good jobs and big money but instead send them to live in cramped apartments.