Mike,
We actually do talk about STDs all of the time around here. ABout 80% of the talk is just BS with no good information. ANother 19.5% consist of stats we pull out of our ass that have no real data to back them up. And maybe less than 0.5% (that is 0.005 in decimal) actually have any real data to back them up. (And yes, I made those stats us while typing this.)
There are risks. By use of condoms, we hopefully reduce that risk. I would say in the past, the population of sites like this were a cut above the rest of the escort/john world. Lot of professional guys, ladies who catered to that niche. As such, the players had better access to medical information and services, had reasons to worry about their health and would take necessary precautions.
In recent days/weeks/months/years, the availability of access to the internet, especially I guess with smart phones, has allowed this internet escort industry to creep (perhaps it was a dash) from a niche market to encompassing a much large portion of the population. The new players in this market often are less sophisticated than the earlier players. The bad news is they may be more likely to engage in other sidelines that increase their risks, they may have less access to medical care, they may be more desperate, and thus more willing to engage in higher risk behaviors (BBFS, for instance).
At the same time, there are a lot of players (usually the johns) who will cross the imaginary lines drawn between the former streetwalker class of providers and the higher end "escorts" and thus can transfer stds acorss the different classes of providers. At the same time, the lower priced providers exert a market pressure on the higher priced providers to provide lower price services, and perhaps to engage in riskier behaviors in order to maintain their cash flow required under their business plans.
With the anonymity of the internet, johns can also have multiple identities that allows them to see different classes of providers without the providers realizing the risks that certain johns pose from their riskier behaviors.
Obviously, we must blame Al Gore for this, since it was his vision of the World Wide Web and his desire to give it to the masses that has created this dilemma in our little perverted world.