Happy April! For many of us, 2026 has already shaped up to be a year of challenges—personal, professional, and political. Sex workers have always known how connected these worlds are. This year, I feel like everyone else is catching up to the realisation we’ve long held: that the rich and powerful are determined to make our lives harder.
We've always been the canary in the coalmine. Laws around freedom of speech, age verification, and the right to earn and spend money online affected us long before they rippled out to others. Now that they're reshaping the Internet as a whole—in ways that are vast and rapidly changing—sex workers are still at the forefront, fighting to stay afloat. Before I found my way to Tryst.link, I worked at one of the many American tech companies that saw sex workers as a liability. Like all the others, it's now destroying everything that made its platform good.
It's been very different being here at Tryst.link, where we're committed to doing what we can to provide some stable ground, despite every challenge lawmakers throw at the sex industry. We don't have Big Tech's lobbying budgets or legal teams—what resources we have are being used to build stability and respond to changes on the horizon.
Being a sex worker on the Internet in 2026 is more complicated than ever. You deserve a platform that will work hard to protect your data, and stay ahead of threats to your income. We hope we can be that platform for you, in 2026 and beyond.
Farewell 2025: What we've built so far
As a whole, 2025 was about starting to build the resilience Tryst.link needed for the uncertain times ahead. We got the message—sex workers around the world were telling us what you actually needed. We stepped back, looked at the full shape of the platform we are and need to be, and moved toward the foundations of something better.
We’ve tackled onboarding times
New profile wait times were a major focus last year. Our support team became overloaded and overwhelmed with massive backlogs. We chose this specific backlog to address first, as a trial run for the work we'd need to do for all the others. We brought wait times for providers joining Tryst down from a median of over forty days to a fairly consistent four days in 2025. Other backlogs are still a work in progress, but you should see improvements this year.
We’ve committed to more transparency
We worked on becoming more available to answer questions on social media, which has helped us identify and resolve issues more quickly. (Shoutout to those of you who told me about a bug with our “touring” feature, which we were able to fix within the same week.)
In July we ran a Reddit Ask Me Anything (AMA) on r/SexWorkers, where we answered your questions about our backlogs, the rise in scams, changes we made responding to laws in the countries we serve, features we offer, and more.
At that AMA, we launched tryststatus.link. Many larger online platforms have a status page where you can see if any part of the site is experiencing issues. tryststatus.link now provides this and other information you need to make business decisions.
Right now, we update it manually on a weekly basis with the median wait time for new profile approval, so anyone signing up can get a sense of how long they’ll need to wait. (This week, you'll also see some estimated delays for the Easter public holidays.) We're now continuously working on improving our ability to predict and provide you with wait time information for the future.
We’ve had to respond to changing legislation
Legislative changes in several countries meant we had to change how we display nudity. As mentioned in our 2025 update, some countries now consider it a conflict of interest to have our staff verify you. We're currently building a process that will keep us online in those countries, while maintaining our high verification standards.
More importantly, while we're redesigning verification, we're always looking for opportunities to minimise the information we have to retain about you. While compliance keeps your ad online, our commitment is to keeping the storage of your data as minimal as possible.
We’ve built foundations that tackle platform misuse
Finally, the elephant in the room: platform misuse. Tough times, economically and legally, create environments where scamming is more lucrative. At the July AMA, we promised that we were working on the widespread issue of profiles that presented as escorts but were really redirecting clients to fansite profiles, with no intention of providing in-person services.
This work has been complex, especially since Tryst.link is committed to solutions that don't involve treating sex workers the way other platforms treat us. We’ve been working quietly, watching to ensure scammers aren't able to innovate in response. In 2025, we invested in the resources we'll need to tackle this issue in 2026 and beyond.
Welcome 2026: What Tryst.link is building this year
Last year, we successfully reduced wait times for new profiles by a staggering amount. We didn't focus on that one number just for the sake of it. Addressing that backlog meant reorganising a lot about how we hire, train, build teams, design processes and work day-to-day. Those massive, invisible changes have prepared us to meet the challenges 2026 is already presenting for our industry. We all know there will be more to come. We're ready to manage those too.
Doing better, visibly: tackling platform misuse
I can say we're working on it all I want, but you need visible outcomes. Platform misuse must be tackled as quickly and comprehensively as possible, without resorting to the dark patterns that larger platforms use against sex workers. It's challenging work. Most platforms never tell us why they've banned us, because that's information scammers use to evade systems better next time. Tryst.link want to be better than that.
Building the systems you actually want
Our search function, memberships, and everything in between were built for a different time—and a much smaller community. Systems that used to work might have unexpected side effects at a larger scale, like the search issue we've recently fixed. Other systems and processes were built piece-by-piece as laws changed, and need to be replaced with something that will be more transparent, logical, and easy to follow.
Small improvements happen frequently, like the changes we've recently made to editing tours. Bigger changes will take time. As I write this, our engineers are working on verification bugs, fraud detection, additional changes relating to laws around nudity online, and more. I'm personally working on a bigger project to make sure we understand even more about what you need. You'll hear more about that next week.
We’re available to you
Above everything else, we want to become more available, clear, and responsive to you everywhere. That means support that is prompt and accurate. It means you're able to reach me or our new community specialist Nico on Reddit, Twitter, and other platforms where we have a presence and get answers that are as honest as we can safely be.
We'll offer information: estimated wait times, how we protect your data, changes to verification, and how clients can avoid scammers. We'll listen to you in turn—your frustrations, disappointments, and hopes for Tryst.link, your expectations for ways we can do better—and take that forward into the rest of 2026 and beyond.
A huge thank you
Thank you for being here. A special thank you to those of you who have been with us since the beginning and seen how rapidly we've grown and changed. I know we haven't always lived up to your standards, but we're still here working to be better.
We're working on building the foundations you need, slowly and steadily. We're working on being able to change quickly with the changing world. We’re working on making sure all of that work is going in directions you truly want.
Here's to another year in this chaotic world, fighting for somewhere to stand. We hope Tryst.link can be part of that for you in some small way. If there's anything we can do better, I hope you let us know.
We love feedback! You can find Maya and Nico on our socials and community@tryst.link, and our Executive of Product Chris at chris@tryst.link. We may not reply to every email, but we read them all.
Are you a sex worker with a story, opinion, news, or tips to share? We'd love to hear from you!
We started the tryst.link sex worker blog to help amplify those who aren't handed the mic and bring attention to the issues ya'll care about the most. Got a tale to tell? 👇☂️✨
