A tech researcher at UCLA is claiming DoorDash disabled their account for engaging in sex work, according to a Twitter thread.
In the thread, Olivia Snow—a professional dominatrix and researcher at the UCLA Center for Critical Internet Inquiry—said her account on Caviar, which is owned by DoorDash, was previously disabled for a violation of the terms and conditions of the app. The specific violation was never disclosed. Snow claims that this is because of cross-platform data sharing.
“Apps never admit to sharing data, but they obviously do, and sex workers in particular are usually like the test population for a lot of these technologies,” Snow said in an interview with the Daily Dot. “But my guess is that [for DoorDash] there’s some shared database of either device phone numbers.”
The Daily Dot reached out to DoorDash for comment.
Snow said other services are notorious for algorithms that prohibit sex workers from using them.
“Surveillance in tech spaces has been happening for like 20 years now, even before social media was at the level where it is now,” Snow said. “PayPal has somehow managed to sniff out sex workers and freeze their accounts and seize their funds. Banks do it a lot, Chase is notorious for this, payment platforms like Cash App and Venmo they do that.”
A number of sex workers replied to Snow’s tweet with their own experiences.
“This is a big reason I don’t use them,” one user wrote. “They deactivated my account once and provided no reason, no explanation. Not even a ‘it was flagged by our security algorithm in error’ just nothing. Flag couldn’t be removed right away, so I was just screwed out of the lunch I needed.”
Others pointed out the absurdity of the incident.
“How dare sex workers…*checks notes*…eat food,” another wrote.
Update 1:45pm CT, April 6, 2022: In a statement to the Daily Dot, a representative for DoorDash says: “While we have not been able to verify the posting online, we have reached out to this individual for more information and are actively investigating. Users are welcome on the DoorDash platform, regardless of a person’s profession or choice of work, and are required to follow our terms of service.”
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