[HN Gopher] Craigslist Shuts Down Personals Section After Congre...
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Craigslist Shuts Down Personals Section After Congress Pass Bill on
Trafficking (2018)
Author : evo_9
Score : 31 points
Date : 2021-11-02 20:50 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.npr.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.npr.org)
| dokem wrote:
| Isn't human trafficking just used as a scary term for what is
| basically 'willful prostitution' in contexts like this? I highly
| doubt Craigslist is systematically used to sell slaves or
| anything truly nefarious given how public and easily monitor-able
| it is.
| vmception wrote:
| Basically the threat of civil and criminal liability has prompted
| many sites to remove their human connection services, and others
| to police them more actively and pre-emptively instead of taking
| a completely "not our problem" approach
|
| This seems to be the stated goal of the bill, at the expense of
| many people.
|
| Has there been any cases or challenge of FOSTA and SESTA laws?
| jimbob45 wrote:
| Edit: I stand corrected. Dragonwriter is absolutely right that
| the bill had bipartisan support (even the holdouts were
| perfectly bipartisan).
| jdavis703 wrote:
| The current Democratic VP has bragged about voting for the
| law for what it's worth. Being "tough on crime" and promoting
| sexual puritanism are bipartisan interests.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Everyone blamed it on Republican overreach at the time
|
| No they didn't.
|
| > and yet the Democrats haven't moved to revoke the law.
|
| It passed the House 388-25 and the Senate 97-2. It had
| overwhelming support in both parties.
| cm2012 wrote:
| I wonder how much escort work happens through Tinder
| ChrisArchitect wrote:
| anything new here since 2018?
|
| Previous discussion from when this was news:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16654698
| [deleted]
| 1cvmask wrote:
| Jeffrey Epstein and his powerful friends never needed the
| Internet for trafficking.
| encryptluks2 wrote:
| I personally think them removing the personals section was a bit
| silly. It is like Facebook saying, we are going to remove our
| messenger feature because people could use it to chat about
| illegal stuff. Or Google saying, we are going to remove our cloud
| storage because people could host illegal stuff.
| jdavis703 wrote:
| It was pretty clear the Congresspeople were specifically
| targeting online classifieds like Backpage and Craigslist (even
| though the law itself is vague enough to target any website
| operator). I don't blame Craigslist for not wanting to face off
| with the Department of Justice and spend years dealing with
| negative PR about how they're enabling sex trafficking.
| encryptluks2 wrote:
| I think they saw them as easy targets to pretend like they
| are being productive. Sex trafficking happens on Facebook,
| Instagram, Twitter, etc. but they aren't shutting down. The
| best way to prevent sex trafficking is investing in free and
| better education, improving resources for the poor, and
| providing health services and counseling.
| [deleted]
| anyfactor wrote:
| Well, didn't some people accuse Wish of facilitating human
| trafficing through listing over-priced cabinets?
| newbie789 wrote:
| That was Wayfair IIRC
| harles wrote:
| This should be dated 2018 in the title. Very old news in tech
| terms.
| vmception wrote:
| But a good time to revisit FOSTA/SESTA to see if those laws are
| worth it
| tyingq wrote:
| If it's lucrative, the listings don't go away. They just end
| up on sites that are out of reach of FOSTA/SESTA.
| floatingatoll wrote:
| And then to post a _relevant_ link about it.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| Agreed. I've noticed an uptick of what appears to be sex
| workers on dating apps. Surely some of them were trafficked,
| just like some were on Craiglist.
|
| I'm not sure why Craiglist personals weren't okay, but the
| same exact thing on Tinder or Bumble is.
| _jal wrote:
| Craigslist felt at risk of being targeted the same way
| Backpage was.
|
| Not wishing to go to jail, they chose to remove anything
| that could possibly be used against them.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Craigslist felt at risk of being targeted the same way
| Backpage was.
|
| Craigslist _had already been targeted_ multiple times by
| law enforcement, and had revised the structure and
| policies of their personals sections multiple times to
| try to stop that. SESTA /FOSTA was when they gave up
| trying to find a way to make it work, but it wasn't just
| the Backpage example.
| cowmoo728 wrote:
| Take a look at the #fmty (fly me to you) hashtag on twitter
| someday. Twitter has become an open market for adult
| services.
| vmception wrote:
| Its all about the liability they are willing to assume.
| Dont confuse that with the law itself.
|
| Its the same about wondering why one person gets culturally
| "cancelled" and another doesn't for the same action: The
| people beside them have a large enough rainy day fund and
| don't mind the risk. It says nothing about what the culture
| actually believes either way, only the risk tolerance of
| the wealthy backers. Huh, reminds me of the princeton study
| that said the same thing about progressive laws that get
| passed, where the culture has no effect on anything except
| that sometimes it coincidentally matches what wealthy
| special interests were already doing, with the caveat that
| its more of a direct democracy for the wealthy special
| interests but an additional level of representative
| democracy for everyone else.
| jdavis703 wrote:
| Banning all dating services would have immediate public
| backlash. SESTA/FOSTA really only caused a stir among
| people who care about sex work or tech freedom/privacy.
| There was very little mainstream media coverage of it, and
| the little there was took a heavy slant to the anti-sex
| trafficking angle.
| _jal wrote:
| It is. Techdirt has been excellent at tracking this stuff, as
| they do:
|
| https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20210728/13245147264/enoug.
| ..
|
| The short version: it is pretty obvious that it did what the
| people pushing it wanted it to do, but it did not do what
| they said it would do. They continue to lie about it in
| multiple ways.
|
| The same actors are currently targeting payment processors in
| their continued attempts to conflate and ban prostitution,
| trafficking, pornography, nudity and frequently sex education
| wherever they can.
|
| https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20211008/17285147720/prudi.
| ..
| _trampeltier wrote:
| Now in 2021 we can see what changed. Do we live now in a so
| much safer world?
| tata71 wrote:
| No, now we just have a bunch of mixed signals in the rooms
| for rent section....
| paulgb wrote:
| > Law enforcement officials say that it is sometimes more
| difficult to track traffickers, because the law pushed them
| further underground. Advocates say that sex workers now face
| higher safety risks. The removal of sites advertising sex
| hinders their ability to vet their clients, the advocates
| say, and is pushing more of them onto the streets.
|
| From Stamping Out Online Sex Trafficking May Have Pushed It
| Underground (Dec 2019)
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/17/technology/fosta-sex-
| traf...
| fennecfoxen wrote:
| No. Backpage, in its dealings with law enforcement, operated
| as a model of cooperation, transparency, and proactive
| outreach in these matters, and received plaudits from
| multiple law enforcement agencies for this. Its availability
| also made it more difficult for pimps and organized crime to
| monopolize the trade in a region, as they exploited or even
| trafficked women.
|
| When it was shut down and seized and its founders prosecuted,
| it was a win for the DoJ PR department and for dangerous sex
| traffickers, and a loss for the rest of the world.
|
| I'm morally against all of this myself in principle, but you
| can't just endorse prohibition without considering the
| consequences: even if all this is bad you can't just say
| "this is bad!!" as an excuse for _making it significantly
| worse_ as you lie to the public and slander the operators.
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