horizontl
horizontl is on a mission to make independent full-service sex work safe, secure and trusted for consenting service providers and clients.
We're including the user community in the design process from the beginning.
Tech has been great for sex work.
It’s made work safer, given service providers the tools to work independently, let everyone connect more easily and away from misguided interventions or moral campaigners eager to shame or punish.
But for all the good, there’s a lot of bad. And a lot of that bad is only getting worse.
Unaccountable data collection for control, surveillance and punishment
Online anonymity as a cover for exploitation, abuse and harassment
Hidden, black-box algorithms that control access and experience
Extortionate fees, data monetization for the privilege of access to service
Authoritarian platform policy unanswerable to users and communities
One-size-fits-all public policy hurts consensual participants, struggles to protect victims
We’re working on a completely new kind of application for trusted person-to-person exchange when you’re ready to start a new connection or book with an existing one.*
horizontl lets you quickly verify that someone else is consenting, adult, and has no known history of abuse or harassment before making a booking, all without revealing personal identity data. Once connected, we help you negotiate bookings and ensure that everyone complies with community standards and individual contract terms.
Privacy-protecting technology and transparent, community-governed policy work together to keep you safe from harassment or abuse and protect your real identity data from other users—and from non-consensual collection, usage or surveillance.
There’s no such thing as the perfect platform. Or tech as the solution to every problem. But technology—alongside a responsible business model and policy that serves individuals and the community—can be a lot better than it currently is.
And a big part of getting it right comes from the collaborative participation of the user community.
We believe you should understand and help shape the technology that affects your life, especially when the stakes for data, trust and personal safety are so high.
We’re building a co-design community that will be PAID to represent community interests in the participatory design of approaches to data & privacy, system architecture, usability, policy and other core elements.