Internet trolls are threatening to report sex workers to the IRS

Internet trolls are attacking women who have sexually explicit social media accounts and threatening to report them to the IRS in a viral online harassment campaign.

Using the hashtag #ThotAudit, the internet users — mostly men —  are going after porn stars and other women who charge for subscription-only social media accounts, trying to get the IRS to audit their undisclosed income.

One tweet promoting the campaign, posted by Twitter user @womenstilltrash, has been retweeted over 20,000 times. Daryush Valizadeh, a blogger whose books were banned from Amazon over their sexually aggressive content, has also been heavily promoting the campaign through his Twitter account.

Right-wing firebrand Jack Posobiec, who has nearly 400,000 followers, has also tweeted about the campaign.

Many porn actresses and sex workers have turned to personalized content in order to make a living. Since so much online porn is free, performers have started to charge users for access to subscription-only social media accounts, often receiving payment through Venmo or cryptocurrency. Others will offer personalized videos.

According to BuzzFeed News, some performers use sites like Patreon, a content distribution platform that makes its “creators” fill out 1099 IRS forms. Others, however, use Snapchat and Instagram to distribute their content, meaning payments fly under the IRS radar.

In some of the posts, trolls claim to be reaching out to performers to inquire about a subscription. Then, once they’ve made contact, they claim they have reported the women for tax fraud through an IRS “whistleblower” referral form.

The form requires several bits of personal information for the subject, and it’s not clear whether individuals are actually filling out the forms or are just threatening to do so. Tax attorney Christopher Kirk told Motherboard that he suspects there’s little the IRS can or would do with a report.

“Even if the reporting person had all of the information they needed about their target, the IRS has bigger fish to fry,” Kirk said. “Most sex workers tend not to earn enough to catch the notice of the IRS.”

Still, the harassment has been pervasive and has outed several women as sex workers. Some have been forced to shut down their accounts, according to an adult streamer who spoke to Motherboard.

“A lot of girls are losing their primary source of income because they’re afraid they’re going to get charged,” she said.

“Internet culture is honestly at its worst and these people are potentially ruining women’s (and a few men’s) lives by getting them into trouble with the law as a joke,” another said. “They are doing it solely because they think it’s funny to ‘cleanse the internet.’”