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Craigslist takes personals sections offline in response to FOSTA
- matthewaveryusa 9y agoThese services already exist on the dark web and motivated users will migrate there instead. I think I'm neutral positive -- if this makes very public websites more accountable for their content that's fine. If you still want to pursue your ventures, devious or not, all you need to do is get the tools and knowledge to access the dark web. There's no doubt in my mind that the web we used to know has been taken over by politics and corporations -- the worst of cocktails. So here we are, the dark web is now the free web, and the free web is the corporate web. For me it will make no difference, I'll still have access to both, but for the uninitiated they will go from surfing the web to serfing the web.
- ggg9990 9y agoSad. I had several great dates from Craigslist personals.
- imesh 9y agoI had several weird hookups from Craiglist. This is probably good for my health.
- seibelj 9y agoObviously driving prostitution underground and out of reach of researchers will improve the lives of sex workers. Prostitution is a very recent industry and was invented by the internet
- cft 9y agoI know several people who met and got married with children on CL. It was a normal dating site, and it also has(d) "strictly platonic" and "missed connections"- all of it is shut down now. Are dating sites/Tinder next? We will miss the days when internet wasn't like cable TV.
- lovehashbrowns 9y agoIt was definitely fun to find dates and quirky people on there. I was finding it especially useful now that I'm in a new city and just looking to meet new people.
- rhodry 9y agoI feel ya dude. I just moved to an entirely new city, and being in my 30's, meeting new people outside of work just isn't what it was in college. I met some pretty cool girls there. Yea, lots of creeps and prostitutes, but there were real people on there too if you took the time to screen them.
- puzzle 9y agoMissed connections seems to have moved to "Community". [edit: moved as in "CL took it out of personals and relocated it altogether", not that users repurposed an existing forum]
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- daturkel 9y agoI loved browsing the strictly platonic section looking for sweet/bizarre/novel posts, but it was definitely full content that was _not_ platonic.
- antonvs 9y agoYou just have a narrow definition of 'platonic'. :)
- blattimwind 9y ago> Prostitution is a very recent industry and was invented by the internet This statement ranks fairly high up on my "List of Hackernews' Statements that are indeed Very False". It would be more apt to say that regulating and banning prostitution is a recent idea (recent as in "the last 100 years or so").
- always_good 9y agoBoth of their sentences were meant sarcastically. I think people often use sarcasm to trot out trite topics because it seems less labored than restating such a popular point of view in earnest.
- blattimwind 9y agoOh well, not sure how I failed to pick up on that. I'll just blame it on the early hour and be on my way.
- aaronrenoir 9y agoFor a good time respond to this post and we can make financial arrangements ;)
- confounded 9y agoStop trafficking yourself!
- aaronrenoir 9y agoI think we can all agree ycombinator is facilitating prostitution
- newnewpdro 9y agoThis is so poignant I don't see why it's being downvoted.
- bdcravens 9y agoIn general humorous Reddit-style comments aren't welcome here. Every community has its own standards.
- Consultant32452 9y ago
- post_break 9y agoHow soon will reddit follow? The great purge has started. Guns removed from YouTube and reddit. Now meet up portions are being nuked.
- smt88 9y agoGuns removed from YT and reddit are totally different. They're corporations choosing to ban certain content from their own platform. Craigslist is responding to a change in the law, which isn't comparable.
- jMyles 9y agoIt's comparable insofar as, in each case the sociopolitical temperature of the moment has resulted in a reduction of the content available to users, even if the actual dynamic varies in the important ways you point out.
- jerezzprime 9y agoBut one is through mandated censorship, the other is voluntary. YouTube decided to stop serving certain content to better serve it's customers, that is it's perogative as a business. Nothing is preventing a competitor from hosting such content.
- thrden 9y agoits hard to see that its anything but censorship when these platforms hold a pure monopoly on the space. If Gutenberg prevented anything displeasing to him from being printed, we would rightly see that as censorship. Further, censorship takes place in many ways only a small number are the result of state actors. In Mexico reporting on the cartels will cause them to target and perhaps kill you.
- smt88 9y agoIf you want to argue that a good defense against censorship is to prevent a single entity from having too much power, I agree.
- smt88 9y agoI hope a lawyer will chime in, because this seems pretty obviously to be an indefensible law. If you make analogies to other services, the justification falls apart. Are landlords responsible for weed dealers' business cards stuck to peg boards? Is USPS responsible for people mailing bombs? Even under DMCA, no public/high-traffic communication service is responsible for its users this way.
- zrobotics 9y agoActually, a landlord can be responsible for tenant's drug dealing. https://www.legalmatch.com/law-library/article/landlord-liability-for-criminal-acts-of-tenants.html https://www.legalmatch.com/law-library/article/landlord-liab... Granted, they have to at least have a suspicion it is occurring, but there is potential liability there, and business cards stuck to a pegboard may be enough.
- kevin_b_er 9y agoA better comparison would be that the privately owned toll road operator must check for drug traffickers itself or be shut down by a law like this.
- joering2 9y agoThis is why we need ows to make top alexia websits a utility!! Imagine your electric provider cutting off your juice because CEO happen to be pro ozon layer guy and believes your fridge is too old and takes too much energy. Or your water company doesnt like you to wash your dog in your bathtub and cuts our water off suggesting t do that in your back yard. Or gas company does a survey and disagree that you cook lamb meat at home and shuts your gas, sggesting to switch to cooking poultry. As billions of people visit these websites, they start to be super cruicial to quality of peoples lives! You can say “you gut cut off youtube go somewhere else”. There is nowhere to go! Same with other major sites.
- cft 9y agoDo you think ozonE was created by an act of Congress, like FOSTA? It's a business move to avoid legal liability.
- crispyporkbites 9y agoI’m all for nationalisation when there is no innovation required and there is limited scope for competition (eg the state Uber’s taxi business is in and the examples you give - water is water and comes in a pipe, same for gas) but the top websites are nowhere near that stage, without competition and innovation they will never improve and go beyond what we currently have.
- remailer404 9y agoWow! I met my wife just over 7 years ago there, and our 2nd kid is due in a few months. Hard to believe that the personals section is gone.
- bdcravens 9y agoIt's definitely changed over the past 7 years, being filled with mostly escort/sugar baby ads in recent times.
- psyc 9y agoWhich only happened because they were first forced to close the previous escort sections several years ago.
- gnicholas 9y agoCurious to know what city you lived in when you met. I also met my wife via an online dating site about 7 years ago, and at the time we were under the impression that CL personals were super sketch. Obviously it isn't that way everywhere, but where I am (Palo Alto) that was the belief among all of my friends.
- narrator 9y agoSince I'm a relatively old guy, I'll tell you how it used to work. Before cell phones, online dating and apps, the way people met people was through friends, or at work, or god forbid, randomly approaching a stranger and introducing oneself, usually at a nightclub or bar, but sometimes at a supermarket or cafe. Rejection happened in one's face publicly in front of other people!
- marssaxman 9y agoThat sounds awful. So much pressure to place on what ought to be everyday interactions!
- zxcmx 9y agoPlenty of people also met through newspaper personal ads...
- JohnJamesRambo 9y agoThis is completely bizarre, we can't go down this route with the internet. It is madness.
- pishpash 9y agoThe internet is not "the internet" any more. It's a corporate owned, tapped and monitored, centralized data warehouse. Another decentralized network needs to be formed separately adhering to the original ideals of the internet. In fact this turnover may need to happen periodically. Jump ship from the current so-called internet.
- cft 9y agoI wonder how long it will take to ban that too, like is Bitcoin ban imminent? Perhaps not a ban, but a legislation rendering it practically useless due to compliance burden. Modern congress now acts impulsively, fast, like in basketball.
- SN76477 9y agoIt is all impulse with zero long term goals in America. This is infrastructure is poor in some places, some areas have failing infrastructure (such as flint MI) These types of projects require an elected official to see beyond their term limits. Something few of them can do.
- huntermeyer 9y agoMembers of the US Congress can serve unlimited terms.
- adventured 9y agoI'm guessing the parent comment meant their term. i.e. see beyond the need to focus on short-term sugar highs for voters, to get re-elected every 2/4/6 years. Politicians think short-term for the same reason public CEOs so often do: near-term placating to retain their position.
- loteck 9y agoWe're taking our ball and going home. Very mature. It's total BS, of course. People can just as easily advertise prostitution services in other sections of CL. Something tells me their deeply principled stand won't extend to shutting down the whole site. Instead, they will take reasonable steps to control the proliferation of sex trafficking on their site. Some magical force somehow precludes them from extending that same concept to personal ads, I guess.
- always_good 9y agoI think you're barking up the wrong tree. Even if you think it's all for show, this is a good way for Craigslist to use their ubiquity to lift FOSTA into the public eye. Nobody knows what FOSTA is much less the sort of impact it could have on their day to day. But I suspect Craiglist's legal team isn't a bunch of idiots when it comes to toeing the line of prostitution. They outlived websites like Redbook even though they have obvious prostitution classifieds. I'd imagine they're experts. It looks more like the Communications Act of 1934 was the centerpiece of their defense.
- loteck 9y agoAll platforms already restrict content they allow users to post, including CL. People still seem to express themselves freely despite those restrictions. That CL would make a vindictive stand in defense of sex trafficking specifically is just bizarre.
- always_good 9y agoCL openly allowed prostitution on their site just yesterday. I wouldn't be so quick to call it self-evident that there was a better response than to immediately shut down their classifieds. I'm sure there's more to do than just flicking a "filter prostitution: yes / no" switch on their admin panel.
- TallGuyShort 9y agoNo, CL has had explicit notices posted regarding prostitution for a long time and has actively moderated for overt prostitution. You can't compare now, but if you compare ads on Craigslist to other personals / services websites like Backpage, Craigslist has been quite PG-13-rated for a long time and at least forces posters to be a bit more subtle. The "massage" section is actually mostly pleasantly legit in my experience, assuming you're not in a big city.
- SeeDave 9y agoWould it be possible to update this post with a direct link to the Craigslist notice at https://www.craigslist.org/about/FOSTA https://www.craigslist.org/about/FOSTA? It seems a bit... inappropriate to deep link to a screenshot posted by a Twitter user with a bio of "CRUSH THE PATRIARCHY DICK BY DICK! XY = man & XX = woman FOREVER"
- cft 9y agoI tried that, but apparently craigslist.org/com are filtered by the HN shadowban filter
- Nadya 9y agoI've been programmatically blocked from viewing their tweets through one of the various blocklists out there. So this submission shows a blocked feed for me (unless I sign out of Twitter). So any alternative link would be nice for me and other people who also may be blocked. [0] https://i.imgur.com/pYANJau.png https://i.imgur.com/pYANJau.png
- dang 9y agoSure. I'm on my phone, though, so someone else will have to post the previous link.
- SeeDave 9y agoThanks :)
- SB9999 9y agoHoly shit I should have known the TERFs were behind this.
- danso 9y agoHow are Craigslist personals more affected by this law/regulation than other semi-anonymous dating sites? Or am I mistaken in thinking that there is any dating site that has the same anonymity as Craigslist?
- pmorici 9y agoIt could be that the risk reward calculation is different for CL than other sites. Personals is just one part of a much larger site for CL where as a dating site's only business is personals so they really don't have anything to lose by taking the risk.
- confounded 9y agoRight. Oh! Except for 25 years in prison.
- x0x0 9y agoCraigslist, from my casual observation (as someone who met my SO on there 9 years ago) had a lot of really obvious ads for sexworkers. They openly tolerated it for a while as long as it was in its own forum. My guess is that enforcement actions will come down hardest on those with a reputation (like craigslist) for tolerating sex workers and who do, in fact (like craigslist) have a large proportion of ads from sex workers.
- dragonwriter 9y ago> Craigslist, from my casual observation (as someone who met my SO on there 9 years ago) had a lot of really obvious ads for sexworkers. They openly tolerated it for a while as long as it was in its own forum. Its own forum was shut down under legal pressure some time ago, and it moved to other personals forums, as I understand. Which is probably why they are now, with the new legal pressure, killing the personals forums.
- nitwit005 9y agoCraigslist, due to its success, became the target that all the activists complained about. If the dating sites are next probably depends on what new target those same activists pick, because it seems unlikely they'll ever be content with their legislative victories.
- pmoriarty 9y agoIt'll be interesting to see how other dating sites (okcupid, match.com, tinder, etc) handle this. If they manage to stay open, this could wind up benefiting them, as craiglist users migrate over. But if they shut down, and newspapers posting personals also run afoul of this law, then this could be a boon to bars and other, more traditional ways of meeting people.
- crispyporkbites 9y ago> this could be a boon to bars and other, more traditional ways of meeting people That is insanely optimistic, randomly meeting people in a bar is significantly more dangerous than a prearranged meet, and the first thing most people do after contact online is go to a bar or public meeting point anyway. What is a “traditional” way of meeting someone? Through your parents?
- pmoriarty 9y ago"What is a "traditional" way of meeting someone? Through your parents?" Through friends, hobbies, volunteering, bars, clubs, parties, and various other forms of group entertainment like concerts, plays, etc. Pretty much anywhere people meet face to face counts.
- AnthonyMouse 9y ago> Pretty much anywhere people meet face to face counts. But that's the problem, right? People used to do their banking in a bank, get their books in a library, their toothpaste in a drug store, their music in a record store, etc. Now they do all of that online without leaving home. So they need to meet people online too.
- pmoriarty 9y ago"they need to meet people online too" You don't need to convince me. I see the value of online dating.
- bsder 9y agoCould someone explain to me how this isn't going to go down in flames to an immediate First Amendment challenge?
- CamperBob2 9y agoI think that's why more people aren't upset about it. The courts have been very effective at shutting down this sort of grandstanding.
- Method-X 9y agoI'd encourage folks here to check out ZeroNet (https://zeronet.io https://zeronet.io). It's a cool little project I've been following for the past couple years that's attempting to decentralize the Internet. It's not very popular but surprisingly it has 11.5k stars on GitHub (https://github.com/HelloZeroNet/ZeroNet https://github.com/HelloZeroNet/ZeroNet).
- ShorsHammer 9y agoWould be great if their site was at least readable without js. There's a few groups working in this field and none seem to have a decent offering, the SAFE network has been at it for over a decade with limited success.
- pavel_lishin 9y agoCan I use your service to promote or facilitate the prostitution of another person? Asking for a friend.
- oehpr 9y agozeronet isn't really that anonymous, you're looking for tor or i2p
- Method-X 9y agoYou can access ZeroNet through Tor.
- pavel_lishin 9y agoYou miss my point, which is that ZeroNet could fall under this idiot blanket law.
- DannyBee 9y agoThis is not surprising, but sad. Years ago, i was dragged (i was the only engineer in the local office) into a whitehouse (or maybe it was state department, i can't remember) sponsored working group on online sex trafficking. The non-profits dedicated to fighting this, while seemingly well-intentioned, were completely and totally unwilling to see any other perspective or try to find shared ground. It was scorched earth approach or nothing. Literally to the tune of "we should be burning down craigslist entirely, and yahoo, google, microsoft, etc should be required to be scanning your search history and reporting you to the police if they suspect you might be sex trafficking". It was frustrating enough that two of the other participants literally walked out. The only thing mildly surprising to me here is that it took them ~10 years to get the house to do it.
- tptacek 9y agoI suppose if you work directly with people on the front lines of that problem, Craigslist personals might seem pretty trivial in comparison.
- AFNobody 9y agoTo me, the odd thing is they focus on that instead of legalization and helping people report abuses. Legalization is far from perfect but abuse in Nevada brothels is much lower than as street walkers. It seems it's more a puritanical belief system than a genuine desire to render aid.
- sersi 9y agoThis is key. I strongly believe that legalization is the only answer to the problem. Driving things underground is only going to cause more issues and abuse to the sex workers. It's kind of ironic when in France, for example, a law gets passed criminalizing the customers while the sex workers go in the street to protest that law saying that it will create more abuse (and one year after, they were right). Trying to stop behaviors that will always exist in human societies doesn't work, it just drives the demand underground and if things are illegal already, then other more illegal, more abusive behaviors start to surface.
- trhway 9y ago97-2 in Senate. Probably only sex and drugs have such universal magical power over politicians of all colors.
- TeMPOraL 9y agoIf only NASA could say that they found on Mars a new substance that probably eliminates the desire to do drugs... We'd be having a golden age of space exploration now.
- theandrewbailey 9y agoIf NASA discovered oil on Mars, we'd be there years ago. (Something liberation something something...)
- TeMPOraL 9y agoFWIW, it's raining natural gas on Titan.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- extralego 9y agoIt seems this and the new Youtube/Reddit bans would push more of this communication to the dark web and/or other private communication channels. I don't think I am comfortable with that. But, hopefully it leads to more support and push for privacy and decentralization. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-03-21/youtube-bans-firearm-sales-and-how-to-videos-prompting-backlash https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-03-21/youtube-b... https://motherboard.vice.com/amp/en_us/article/ne9v5k/reddit-bans-subreddits-dark-web-drug-markets-and-guns https://motherboard.vice.com/amp/en_us/article/ne9v5k/reddit...
- abritinthebay 9y agoThere is something to be said for making a discouraged activity harder to do. Yes, it pushes these people underground but in a sense that is good as it makes it harder for them and harder to access them. In return it’s not much harder for authorities to infiltrate and there’s less non-illicit activity to filter. Not perfect, but it’s not always bad.
- AFNobody 9y agoIt increases the sexual abuse of marginalized women statistically. Legal brothels have much lower rates of abuse.
- abritinthebay 9y agoGiven the law was in response to abuse of marginalized women sexually in these services (well written or not) that’s not a very good argument in this case. Both are underground: this is about removing east of access to the service not legal vs illegal services
- AFNobody 9y agoIt was not passed for that reason. https://www.thecut.com/2018/03/sesta-anti-sex-trafficking-bill-fosta.html https://www.thecut.com/2018/03/sesta-anti-sex-trafficking-bi...
- crispyporkbites 9y ago> The bill amends the federal criminal code to add a new section that imposes penalties—a fine, a prison term of up to 10 years, or both—on a person who, using a facility or means of interstate or foreign commerce, owns, manages, or operates an interactive computer service (or attempts or conspires to do so) to promote or facilitate the prostitution of another person. How do you define promoting or facilitating prostitution? Eg. Does WhatsApp fall foul of this? Email? Basically any communication service can be used for this...
- cpcat 9y agoWhat if those sites move their operations to other countries
- quotemstr 9y agoI am fucking sick and fucking tired of people interfering with the free choice of individuals in any effort to "fix" society and "help" people. Lawmakers and advocates, have some epistemic humility and acknowledge that your own perspective may be mistaken. Not everything is oppression. Not every activity is injustice. Sometimes, people just fucking disagree.
- rpearl 9y agoThe goal of the legislation in question is specifically to help individuals that have been coerced, against their free will, into sex trafficking. It is not about voluntary interactions between consenting adults. The legislation might be misguided or ineffective--I haven't really looked into it--but it very definitely isn't about restricting the free choice of individuals.
- valuearb 9y agoIt’s completely limiting free choice and voluntary interactions between consenting adults. A huge personals section just got shut down. Unless you think 100% of personal ads are coerced sex trafficking, which would be rather crazy opinion. If you truly wanted to curb sex trafficking, you’d legalize prostitution, not drive it farther underground.
- jacobush 9y agoHow... does that follow? To reduce slavery, legalize prostitution? There must be some steps in between I am missing.
- valuearb 9y agoLegal prostitutes can call the police for help from pimps or others trying to abuse or coerce them, without fear of arrest. Legal prostitutes are incentivized to work with the police to report others being coerced, it’s competition. Bringing things out into the open helps clean them up. Keeping them in the dark allows evil to multiply. The next time Prohibition helped the people it was trying to protect will also be the first time.
- downandout 9y agoI just read the text of this bill. The way it reads, the entire online dating industry should be closing its doors...tonight. CEOs of these companies face penalties of up to 25 years in prison. Why were there not massive protests over this? I had never heard of this bill before today.
- confounded 9y agoI recommend that you subscribe to the blog of the EFF, and perhaps consider membership. They’ve been following this law in it’s various guises for quite some time, and providing tools for concerned citizens to contact their representatives effectively. Here’s some analysis of the proposals from October 2017: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2017/10/sex-trafficking-experts-say-sesta-wrong-solution https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2017/10/sex-trafficking-expert...
- downandout 9y agoI’ll definitely subscribe and pay more attention to these issues. Thanks for the link!
- narrator 9y agoMeanwhile, net neutrality, which wasn't even policy until the Obama administration gets huge press all over the place. What happened to Silicon Valley's political activism?
- SlowRobotAhead 9y agoGood question... almost like they might not be telling you the truth when the say they are riled up about X because of Y. The silence on Z is deafening.
- jimktrains2 9y agoNN rules predate the Obama administration in various forms.
- SlowRobotAhead 9y ago
- gardnr 9y agoDoesn't it seem likely that an alternative will pop up which is outside the jurisdiction of FOSTA which may or may not cooperate with USA law enforcement as well?
- ronilan 9y ago"With great power there must also come great responsibility, but I don't like it, so I'll just go on behaving like teenager bitten by a spider." -- Tech industry leader (2018) /S
- coupdetaco 9y agohttps://youtu.be/8uT38_pRxHo?t=15m6s https://youtu.be/8uT38_pRxHo?t=15m6s
- omarforgotpwd 9y agoRather than stopping undesirable activity, this will merely push it to platforms and protocol that are out of the US government's control.
- jonnycomputer 9y agoIt might, or it might not. And even if it did, then so what? I think the attitude you expressed is equivalent to: well since there is no way to actually stop the slave trade from using some platform, US companies might as well profit from it.
- mirko22 9y agoso we should shut off everything that has potential for slave trade? like phones? email? post mail? cars? what?
- omarforgotpwd 9y agoNot at all. If a certain law does not solve the intended problem and it poses costs on innocent bystanders (e.g. website administrators who are not involved in any illegal activity), then it might need to be reconsidered. The equivalent attitude would be: Requiring everyone shit in the sink and wash their hands in the toilet is not going to solve insider trading, so we should not make that a requirement. "So what, you support insider trading and letting people profit off private company information?" No, not at all. I just want to shit in the toilet and wash my hands in the sink. It won't make a difference to insider trading either way.
- kinghajj 9y agoThe congress.gov link states "Section 230 limits the legal liability of interactive computer service providers or users for content they publish that was created by others." Wouldn't this exempt Craigslist from the act, since all posts are created entirely by their users?
- djf1 9y agoThe bill imposes criminal penalties -- Section 230 does not shield platforms from liability under federal criminal law. The bill also carves out exceptions weakening Section 230 protections. [1] https://www.eff.org//deeplinks/2018/03/how-congress-censored-internet https://www.eff.org//deeplinks/2018/03/how-congress-censored... [2] https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/house-bill/1865 https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/house-bill/1865
- bouncetime 9y agoFrom someone who has dated prositutes and strippers. I can tell you the ones I currently know and have dated have this view. They enjoy sex. They are going to have it anyway. You are going to pay them with your time, your flowers, dinner, gifts, take them to do things. Their thing is why not take the money spend it on what they need as opposed to dinner etc. either way everyone! Is buying it and selling it
- deftturtle 9y agowaiting for a new site to spring up in response...
- odammit 9y agoIt’s just a matter of time before there is a code like “selling new pink shoes for roses” in the clothing section. Will they shut that down too?
- elchief 9y agoStill up in Canada Though it's mostly bots these days. Used to be a good place to get laid
- kakarot 9y agoSo how long before these new powers are used for something other than suppressing prostitution? (Labeling all activity on such sites as "sex trafficking" is an attempt to control the language of the conversation, and should be avoided)
- smadge 9y agoTonight tens of thousands sex workers are devestated that their safer tool for finding clients is shutting down. Exploitative sex trafficking will continue unabated, but independent working people will be forced into more dangerous situations.
- Noos 9y agoLOL at craigslist being "safe." That site was always sketchy as hell.
- 51Cards 9y agoIt's a step up from standing on a corner.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- lagadu 9y agoYeah, and without it around they'll have to move to far sketchier platforms or streetwalking. Good job making it worse.
- matthewn 9y agoWhen you say "always" are you indicating you've been using the site roughly since its inception? I have, and my memory of its first 10 years or so does not match your description at all.
- throw777777777 9y ago> independent working people Good. Sorry, but if you are not being exploited through human trafficking then you are exploiting and taking advantage of your clients deepest emotions of loneliness and love for profit. Anyone close to that industry will tell you that the majority of your money is made off "whales" just like in Mobile gaming. Whales that fall in love and spend 5 figures and up a year on one person. Not some construction worker wanting a quickie after a long day of work. Where did this fantasy of sex workers being some kind of net positive for the world come from? I don't feel sex work needs to be illegal, but I'm certainly not going to have much sympathy for that industry as a whole. Go into a profession that makes the world a better place. No better than Payday loan dealers.
- safety1st 9y agotest
- tcskeptic 9y agoPushing this market off the internet and back onto the streets will increase the murder rate of sex workers. This bill will literally kill people. See Scott Cunningham at Baylor who specializes in the economics of Sex Work and other criminal markets.
- felatio 9y ago"Mental Health issues, homelessness, and drug addiction" These are methods of creating and participation in a human trafficing situation. The product of a sex worker is a human service and the source of the product is humans. The mentioned problems are a part of societies lack of response to "bullies and actual mental conditions propagated by weaker social enviornment" When some one does not undetstand they are on drugs they may decide to do something exciting and change their norm for a little while also with the use of primos (i.e. the neighbor keep smoking something ect.) and corruption through persistance and groups of people to create a stressful situation at home people now have an alternative to their own rite to their own destiny. A list like craigslist allows perpatrators and unwitting victims to communicate without being seen as easily. If no one is going to address the activities then the participants are going to go too far passed the boundries of other persons and society has less safety for those not interested in participaton in those activities. A person who would be left out of normal social activities is now able to affotd to create problems and join with others who do the same more easily and safely. The issues first mentioned here are paid for a lot by governments designed to help society members. A human trafficking issue also involes intellectual activity and skilled labor as well as the fact that the more some people are left to succede the more they add these to the society they live in and pay the problems what the probllems would consider zero profit or power.
- olfactory 9y agoCraigslist personals offered us a very clear view of the utter failure of authorities to combat sex trafficking.
- SB9999 9y agoI have 6 young girls I am selling for sex. Correspond with me via this thread. Boom. This site is now in violation of FOSTA. Shut it down!
- drawkbox 9y agoReal sex trafficking is horrible but censorship can end up bad as well and harms the majority of people who aren't doing horrible things. At least you knew where bad actors were as a sort of honeypot, closing down stuff like this just makes them go dark and spread like roaches. It is messed up to use 'trafficking' to go after porn as well.
- swanlyk 9y agoAre we getting to the point where private electronic conversations are all public? And all are "published" because they're stored on a server that can be accessed (legitimately or not) and therefore have to be censored.
- stevespang 9y agoDon't see this as a huge loss for Craigs, they have already been charging me for simple "Gig" ads a week or so before this occurred. It's ALL about the money, always has been - - always will be.
- werber 9y agoBut there's still the therapeutic section... They don't seem as concerned with prostitution as they're with litigation
- ratata 9y agoWould an open source peer-to-peer personals board qualify as a 'platform' under this bill ?
- habeebtc 9y agoOn the bright side, the "Rants and Raves" section has disappeared with it.
- jzawodn 9y agonope: https://sfbay.craigslist.org/d/rants-raves/search/rnr https://sfbay.craigslist.org/d/rants-raves/search/rnr
- saudioger 9y agoThey'll just move to the "therapeutic" section as masseuses. I totally respect the mission of preventing sex trafficking, but it just feels like they're playing whack-a-mole.
- jasonkostempski 9y agoIt feels like they're playing whack-a-mole using nukes, killing millions of non-moles trying to take out 1 mole.
- Danielalonso91 9y agoThis is completely unrelated - but, one thing I love about comments on Hacker News is how well-written they are, and eloquent, too.
- nkkollaw 9y agoCan these companies (Craigslist, Reddit) open offices in Europe and run those sections of the website from there, somehow?
- Fjolsvith 9y agoSo, Craigslist no longer allows Americans to use personals because of FOSTA. What's to keep Americans from going a foreign based service/server for their hookup needs? It wouldn't necessarily have to be Darknet, right?
- Fjolsvith 9y agoI see a new, open-source, peer-to-peer app that piggybacks on the Ethereum blockchain to provide personal ads.
- greggarious 9y agoMaybe I'm misreading but it looks like this only passed the Senate - doesn't that mean it isn't law yet? Am I misreading or is this more of a protest?
- YTGRK 9y agohttps://youtu.be/I2l8xkjTUh4 https://youtu.be/I2l8xkjTUh4
- anonymous5133 9y agoThe irony though is that the personal section will most likely just migrate to another section of the website.
- mattnewton 9y agoAnd then potentially cause the entire website to fold when they are charged with sex trafficking in random places.
- mattnewton 9y agoI think that there are three kinds of people that would support this bill: A) sincere people for whom 1 victim is too many and any tactic is worth reducing the victim count by any amount B) people too afraid to be labeled as pro sex trafficking C) people who want weapons to silence speech and are using A and B I don’t know how you would go about determining the mix, but I am sure the C group will show their hand soon enough when we see calls for shutting down platforms that were used to support political rivals, after they fail to police user content on their site.
- grawprog 9y agoLol not in Canada.
- nvr219 9y agoI got a date off craigslist once and it wasn't good.
- rmrm 9y agoI find a somewhat irresolvable issue on the liberal viewpoint of female sexuality and using sex to sell things (or selling sex directly) I see a lot of push back and negativity towards things like "booth babes" and other models that are employed to use their sexuality to help sell something. And I dont really argue with that, from a consumer angle. But I do also hear and feel for those models, who likely rightly say, why am I now out of a job? How is that empowering? On the other hand, I think typically liberal viewpoint would be that prostitution should be made more legal and out of the shadows, and of course people can sell sex. Which I also dont disagree with. As it relates to laws and rights, it isn't in conflict - they both should be legal. But the underlying feelings and opnions about them, it seems somewhat unresolved. There seems to be more hatred towards the objectification of women, but not targeted at say strippers. It doesn't seem totally coherent.
- huragok 9y agoThe question you have to ask is whether or not a "booth babe" would choose such work over others if they had a choice and not merely because it pays the bills.
- nugi 9y agoOr a Brogrammer chooses to program over other thing he would rather do? How is that different than the 'push' to 'get women in tech'?
- rmrm 9y agoI would assume attractive women have more options open to them, not less. Same for atrractive males. Attractive people earn more, on average. Being a booth babe is an option not open to unattractive people. Seems like a superset.
- kakarot 9y agoWould you choose the job you currently have if you had another choice and not merely because it pays the bills? The arguments against capitalism and against sex workers are two completely orthogonal things. Sex work is a consequence of capitalism + enforced class systems perpetuated by leadership. Fix those things instead of claiming women who have complete personal agency in what they do with their bodies are still being exploited. Of course they are. All of us are being exploited.
- jayess 9y agoGrindr next?
- IdontRememberIt 9y agoI own a leader classified ad website in my country (not the us). You cannot imagine the pressure we get from all directions to remove categories (regulation, companies, associations, etc). The free horizontal classified ad websites are slowly dying. In the future, as a customer, you should be prepared to pay for publishing an ad with skyrocketing fees due to regulation. Classified ads will be validated (vs moderated) as regulation tend to push the responsabilities on the website owner. The categories and the variety of allowed items will decrease due to regulation and commercial pressure (You can forget reselling your 10'000USD Gucci bag after a break up).
- IdontRememberIt 9y agoTwitter, Instagram and Facebook have a lot of escorts having a profile. Are their CEO also at risk? Are they planning to remove these profiles? Is Facebook Marketplace at risk? Has someone some info?
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- kazinator 9y agoHow far-reaching is FOSTA? Say I'm in the US and happen to run a mailing list about some programming language or whatever. Someone posts an off-topic message that promotes prostitution with sex-trafficking victims. The message passes spam filters and is redistributed to the mailing list subscribers. Am I now criminally liable for facilitating this, as the mailing list operator? If so, shouldn't CL be shutting down everything entirely? If I'm not liable, on the other hand (that is to say, I have an "off topic defense"), then why can't that apply to CraigsList; they can just say that anything of that sort is off topic. At the very least they could keep the "strictly platonic" category where that sort of promotion is off topic.
- animex 9y agoI guess these service providers can now go back to the safety of the streets.
- dumbfounder 9y agoThe intent of FOSTA was right in my opinion, if you are making money from these services then you should spend some of that money policing your services. That seems fair to me in theory. Not sure whether FOSTA got it right or wrong, but I do know some of these players did little to nothing to police their services, and brought about their own downfall.
- masonic 9y agoAt least you can still buy fake IDs, passports, and "green cards" on CL[0]. [0] https://sfbay.craigslist.org/sfc/tix/d/make-your-passport-drivers/6533065522.html https://sfbay.craigslist.org/sfc/tix/d/make-your-passport-dr...
- Khaine 9y agoThis law is insane. It also impacts the operations of US companies overseas, where prostitution is legal. So for example, if a prostitute hosts their website on AWS, then Amazon is in violation of this law.
- lizardskull 9y agoThe craiglist Casual Encounters section destroys lives. It laid waste to mine. There have been many tear filled nights spent wondering who would I be now if I could delete that site from my history. A string of uncountable months searching for one new sexual partner after another. The principle expense paid includes a ledger of a life of total neglect for those who felt true love for me. And then the hot pattern takes hold again. The emails pile up of mostly men wanting pixels and sizes as a small part of my mind tells me to stop. But the fingers keep clicking. One blue link after another until I find what I do not need. Sex is a fire which begins to burn out of control for some of us. I cannot be the only one since the act takes at least two.
- freech 9y agoIf you want to stop having casual sex but feel you can't control yourself, maybe you can have yourself committed to some sort of clinic, instead of trying to take away the possibility from everyone else too? (Which probably wouldn't even help, since if you're not hideously ugly you will probably find more then enough men willing to have sex with you without craigslist.)
- krauses 9y agoI’m confused. So they felt at risk by allowing adults to post personal ads in search of romantic connections but they leave open the “Services->Therapeutic” category that openly promotes ads for illegal rub-and-tug establishments that are frequently the target of sex trafficking raids.
- luckydude 9y agoI sent Craig an email this morning saying the same thing. I don't get why they close down the part of the website that was (mostly, I guess?) supporting people trying to get in a relationship and, I'm sure some sort of Tinder like hookups, and leave open the part where they actually have some real exposure. Doesn't make sense.
- jurassic 9y agoThis makes me sad. I never actually responded to any of the personals on Craigslist, but looking through them back in 2008 and seeing what I felt attraction to helped me understand and come to terms with the fact that I really am bisexual. Fast forward ten years and next month I'm marrying my same-sex partner. Not saying I wouldn't have figured that out without Craigslist personals, but I do feel strongly that there's value in having a space for people to broadcast their desire without moderation.
- tarikjn 9y agoWhat a terrible bill, it is retroactive and cover foreign commerce, meaning even operators of a foreign company could be charged when travelling through the US. If as what I am reading in the comments and my intuition is right, the numbers prove unequivocally that this bill will have the effect of increasing sex trafficking and making investigating more difficult, is there a thin possibility that the lawmakers be charged under their own bill for knowingly voting it into law while possibly being aware of the effect it would have on sex trafficking?
- jimbonsf 9y agoThis is a terrible step backwards for our country, no thanks to those who do not understand the newer information technologies, like the internet and social media, or appreciate the ridiculous criminalization of consensual sexual relations. CL may be gone, but I hope the structural, dynamic resilience of the web won't take long for workarounds and alternatives.
- corruptamerica 9y agoThis has nothing to do with governent laws. Like everything else its money. For instance missed connections i know a friend who found his father threw it. The real problem is craislist will have to employee people to police the site and that means paying money. This is what i think of this jew society the owner of craiglist and Zuckerburg that jew thief should such each others cocks. This is an end run to stop freedom of exspession. The oldest profession in the world good luck stopping it. Its like guns the horse is out of the barn good luck getting him or the guns that are out there back. This is what starts revolutions. I am not saying that there personal section was health but there are some lines the goverment should not cross.
- nastyron 9y agoWhat I'd like to know of the voters who passed this renovated legislation is this. Was it a moral issue or unlawful issue that drove them, that is beyond the women's defamation groups, Christian Coalitions and pressure from the moral majority. Sex workers are most likely well connected though some may us CL or others to attract more buyers, most women interested in making money the old fashioned way really didn't need CL. This again is another knee jerk reaction to a festering problem and that is the people's appetite for sex. We have government stifling cigarettes sales, we had them stifle alcohol sales, they stifled tax free Internet purchases and now snoop your bank deposits in the name of preventing terrorists from laundering money. What a crock of shit. Now they have stifled an area of individual free speech and volition. Yes CL could have done a better job of monitoring personal ads, but so could states do a better job of monitoring used car sales. They simply ad "buyer beware" and that suffices. How can the government in clear conscience threaten to hold the Internet company responsible for what a person's intentions are without any real knowledge of it? That being the case then all sales sections will have to go under scrutiny as will rentals at least shared rentals. There's a ton of BS artists posting there with less than good intentions. Lastly, the entire thing would be more credible if the consenting parties had made public first the size of the problem in America. How many sex slave rings actually operate in the U.S. Second, how much incontrovertible proof is there they are using CL personals to accomplish their goals. This is the same type of legislation used to enforce driving over the limit rules. It was crafted under pressure from MADD and like organizations that don't care to drink and figured hey a few drunks are dangerous so we'll hang them all. Well intentioned legislation that is designed to impale a small section of society while it actually disrupts the masses is the proverbial pimple on the elephants ass. I guess next it's the massage parlors because there are tons of them and reading those inviting headlines one can only imagine something far greater than a relaxing massage.