5 ms·

The real "original sin" of the free internet is the curation of the experience of using neutral information systems to drive engagement and skew users decisions

by sgt101 8y ago

The real "original sin" of the free internet is the curation of the experience of using neutral information systems to drive engagement and skew users decisions away from their own interest towards the commercial interest of the web sites. Routine deception and manipulation mean that there are no clear lines or defensible moats of freedom. There is no rule of law or communal standard of fairness on the internet. This article fogs that truth. When ever I turn off the filters on my search engines explicit content is served instantly. I think that the censorship that the author is referring to is either self imposed, imposed by commercial decisions (tumblr) or due to legal constraints (child porn, rape, worse things than that). Consensual sex work is mentioned, my perception is that the vast majority of sex workers are not doing it because of free choice, but rather because of exploitation and pressure. Drug and alcohol addiction as well as a history of abuse are often cited as drivers, and I hear of no stories where people have found happy and fulfilled lives as prostitutes. The "women speaking truth" can only every have authentic voices if they are speaking from positions of power and security; I do not believe that this is the case for prostitutes anywhere. The illegality of prostitution is not because people are prudes, it is because prostitutes are routinely destroyed by their work.

logicchains 8y ago
> I hear of no stories where people have found happy and fulfilled lives as prostitutes Here's one: https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/the-majority-of-sex-workers-enjoy-their-job-why-should-we-find-that-surprising-10083175.html https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/the-majority-of.... "In fact, when you ask sex workers about their job satisfaction and working conditions – as a study led by Leeds University just has – the majority of them are happy. When asked to describe their work, respondents typically selected positive or neutral words. 91 per cent of sex workers described their work as ‘flexible’, 66 per cent described it as ‘fun’ and over half find their job ‘rewarding’.". That aside, have you heard many stories where people have found happy and fulfilled lives as coal miners? As Amazon warehouse workers? Lots of jobs suck, but we don't ban them. >it is because prostitutes are routinely destroyed by their work. https://academic.oup.com/aje/article/159/8/778/91471 https://academic.oup.com/aje/article/159/8/778/91471 found a standardised mortality rate of 1.9 for American prostitutes (almost twice that of the average member of the population), similar to what https://ajph.aphapublications.org/doi/pdf/10.2105/AJPH.54.5.758 https://ajph.aphapublications.org/doi/pdf/10.2105/AJPH.54.5.... found for coal miners, but we don't ban coal mining. For prostitution, violence was one of the "predominant causes of death", a situation that would be significantly improved were prostitution legal, as prostitutes could then rely on police protection without fear of being arrested for their work.
- ben_w 8y ago
  Sex work is legal in Germany. I don’t know where to look for the equivalent statistics in Germany, but that would settle the question of if legalisation would solve the problem of violence.
  - logicchains 8y ago
    https://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/journal.pmed.1002680 https://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/jo... conducted a meta-analysis of studies looking at the effect of legalisation and found "Together, the qualitative and quantitative evidence demonstrate the extensive harms associated with criminalisation of sex work, including laws and enforcement targeting the sale and purchase of sex, and activities relating to sex work organisation."
- fdggdfsvscvsd 8y ago
  I have read several stories about happy coal miners, actually. There seems to be something about the companionship among coal miners that makes it great (for them). In general - if somebody does a job, presumably the alternatives would be worse. That applies to prostitution as well.
- dwighttk 8y ago
  You might want to change that to “we haven’t yet banned coal mining”
johnny22 8y ago
you should meet some real life sex workers
iliketosleep 8y ago
One could also argue that prostitutes are routinely destroyed by the legal system. Prostitution always has and always will exist in one form or another regardless of law. Making it illegal only forces it underground, causing more harm and creating more opportunity for organized crime.
perilunar 8y ago
> my perception is that the vast majority of sex workers are not doing it because of free choice, but rather because of exploitation and pressure. Your perception would be wrong. The vast majority of sex workers are doing it for the money, same as any job. > The illegality of prostitution Prostitution is not illegal in many parts of the world, and even decriminalised is some parts. > I hear of no stories where people have found happy and fulfilled lives as prostitutes. That's because you aren't listening. There's plenty of sex workers who blog or who are on twitter that you can ask. Just follow some and see. > prostitutes are routinely destroyed by their work. The biggest risk to sex workers in parts of the world where it is illegal is rape and murder by law enforcement.
- carlob 8y ago
  > Prostitution is not illegal in many parts of the world, and even decriminalised is some parts. Nitpick: decriminalization means that something is still illegal, but it's not a crime.
  - diegoperini 8y ago
    What's the difference?
    - Lazare 8y ago
      Decriminalisation means relaxing the penalties so you get a civil fine, not a criminal charge. Jaywalking may get you a ticket, but it doesn't make you a criminal. Many people advocate for the decriminalisation of many drugs, including hard drugs; the idea is that even if we don't think heroine use is okay, locking someone up for using heroine isn't solving the problem. Legalisation means making it actually legal, as many US states have now made marijuana, or as NZ has made sex work. It can still be regulated or taxed, but in general its fine.
    - TheOtherHobbes 8y ago
      Crimes go through a criminal justice track, and outcomes may include jail time. Illegal actions go through a civil justice track, and typically result in fines and/or some sort of civil restitution for victims. If you ignore building codes you're acting illegally. If you ignore building codes and people die you're a criminal. Which is fine as far as it goes. But criminality is often defined politically, not empirically in terms of outcomes. Sex work is complicated precisely because it's on the edge of consensus morality. It has so much moral and political baggage, and for those who care it's so difficult to manage in ways that minimise harm for all involved, that it's almost the definition of a political football. It doesn't help that authoritarians are invariably utterly hypocritical about it. Sex workers know that business is going to boom whenever a convention of self-styled moral hawks hits town. So there's always political pressure to keep that hypocrisy hidden, which makes the criminal/civil line even more of a hot-button issue than it would be anyway.
Lazare 8y ago
> Consensual sex work is mentioned, my perception is I would be more interested in data than one person's subjecting perception. > I hear of no stories where people have found happy and fulfilled lives as prostitutes One of the major points of the article is that the voices of sex workers have been driven off the internet. You can't justify censorship by saying that none of the now-censored voices are complaining. > The "women speaking truth" can only every have authentic voices if they are speaking from positions of power and security; I do not believe that this is the case for prostitutes anywhere. That is either completely false, OR by your logic nobody can ever speak about what it's like to work a retail job. Some jobs suck; sometimes the people working them don't have a lot of power and security. So either your arguing that we shouldn't listen to anyone who isn't a millionaire, or you're not aware of the voices that exist. > The illegality of prostitution is not because people are prudes, it is because prostitutes are routinely destroyed by their work. Funny how that seems to only happen in places prostitution is illegal.
- zozbot123 8y ago
  The problem with legalizing prostitution is that it opens up a sanctioned venue which human traffickers can use to slip under the radar. You can have the best regulation in the world and you'll still fail to have only the entirely above-board, willing sex work that the sex workers themselves would like. It's the same reason why e.g. we ban all new elephant ivory, period-- even ivory that supposedly does not come from poachers killing an endangered, wild elephant. Because if you try to allow "good, fair-trade ivory", the poachers will try their best to get their stuff in there. And when it comes to the balance between costs and benefits, it doesn't take many bad apples to spoil the whole barrel.
  - Lazare 8y ago
    Good theory. That totally could be an issue. Maybe sex work is like ivory, and not like, I dunno, all the other jobs human beings do! Or maybe not. Luckily, we can check NZ, since they legalised sex work, and research has since been done to see what the answer was: http://www.gaatw.org/publications/SWorganising/NewZealand-web.pdf http://www.gaatw.org/publications/SWorganising/NewZealand-we... And actually, none of that is true! Actually it turns out that what really enables trafficking and the abuse of sex workers is situations where they can't go to the police, or where brothels have to hide their existence from the authorities entirely. Once you're legal and regulated, it's really easy for the immigration officials to show up and start checking paperwork. > you'll still fail to have only the entirely above-board, willing sex work that the sex workers themselves would like. Funny you should say that; again in the linked report it was noted that NZ does have an issue with that, but not from trafficked women, but rather from migrants. Due to anti-trafficking sentiment, the original law legalising prostitution banned people on temporary visas from working in the industry, which means people on temporary visas are the only sex workers in the country who can find themselves subjected to abusive work conditions while being unable to report it to the authorities. It makes sense, of course; everywhere you ban sex work you create a shadow that victimisation can take place in.
belorn 8y ago
There is a very easy test to check if anti-prostitution laws are prudes or about labor rights. You rewrite them into labor rights so to make prostitution illegal without including the word sex. I have not heard a single country that have managed to do this. For rather obvious reasons, it is not practical to make employment illegal where the employee is in need of money. There are countries however that do treat the problems with prostitution as a labor rights issue and resolve it similarly. For example when people think of human trafficking they think of prostitution, but human trafficking in constructions is actually several times larger. Exploitation in construction is thus a very large problem and the common solution is to impose stricter regulations so the government can catch and punish those that earn money on human suffering.

by sgt101 8y ago

logicchains 8y ago

> I hear of no stories where people have found happy and fulfilled lives as prostitutes Here's one: https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/the-majority-of-sex-workers-enjoy-their-job-why-should-we-find-that-surprising-10083175.html https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/the-majority-of.... "In fact, when you ask sex workers about their job satisfaction and working conditions – as a study led by Leeds University just has – the majority of them are happy. When asked to describe their work, respondents typically selected positive or neutral words. 91 per cent of sex workers described their work as ‘flexible’, 66 per cent described it as ‘fun’ and over half find their job ‘rewarding’.". That aside, have you heard many stories where people have found happy and fulfilled lives as coal miners? As Amazon warehouse workers? Lots of jobs suck, but we don't ban them. >it is because prostitutes are routinely destroyed by their work. https://academic.oup.com/aje/article/159/8/778/91471 https://academic.oup.com/aje/article/159/8/778/91471 found a standardised mortality rate of 1.9 for American prostitutes (almost twice that of the average member of the population), similar to what https://ajph.aphapublications.org/doi/pdf/10.2105/AJPH.54.5.758 https://ajph.aphapublications.org/doi/pdf/10.2105/AJPH.54.5.... found for coal miners, but we don't ban coal mining. For prostitution, violence was one of the "predominant causes of death", a situation that would be significantly improved were prostitution legal, as prostitutes could then rely on police protection without fear of being arrested for their work.

ben_w 8y ago
Sex work is legal in Germany. I don’t know where to look for the equivalent statistics in Germany, but that would settle the question of if legalisation would solve the problem of violence.
- logicchains 8y ago
  https://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/journal.pmed.1002680 https://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/jo... conducted a meta-analysis of studies looking at the effect of legalisation and found "Together, the qualitative and quantitative evidence demonstrate the extensive harms associated with criminalisation of sex work, including laws and enforcement targeting the sale and purchase of sex, and activities relating to sex work organisation."
fdggdfsvscvsd 8y ago
I have read several stories about happy coal miners, actually. There seems to be something about the companionship among coal miners that makes it great (for them). In general - if somebody does a job, presumably the alternatives would be worse. That applies to prostitution as well.
dwighttk 8y ago
You might want to change that to “we haven’t yet banned coal mining”

johnny22 8y ago

you should meet some real life sex workers

iliketosleep 8y ago

One could also argue that prostitutes are routinely destroyed by the legal system. Prostitution always has and always will exist in one form or another regardless of law. Making it illegal only forces it underground, causing more harm and creating more opportunity for organized crime.

perilunar 8y ago

> my perception is that the vast majority of sex workers are not doing it because of free choice, but rather because of exploitation and pressure. Your perception would be wrong. The vast majority of sex workers are doing it for the money, same as any job. > The illegality of prostitution Prostitution is not illegal in many parts of the world, and even decriminalised is some parts. > I hear of no stories where people have found happy and fulfilled lives as prostitutes. That's because you aren't listening. There's plenty of sex workers who blog or who are on twitter that you can ask. Just follow some and see. > prostitutes are routinely destroyed by their work. The biggest risk to sex workers in parts of the world where it is illegal is rape and murder by law enforcement.

carlob 8y ago
> Prostitution is not illegal in many parts of the world, and even decriminalised is some parts. Nitpick: decriminalization means that something is still illegal, but it's not a crime.
- diegoperini 8y ago
  What's the difference?
  - Lazare 8y ago
    Decriminalisation means relaxing the penalties so you get a civil fine, not a criminal charge. Jaywalking may get you a ticket, but it doesn't make you a criminal. Many people advocate for the decriminalisation of many drugs, including hard drugs; the idea is that even if we don't think heroine use is okay, locking someone up for using heroine isn't solving the problem. Legalisation means making it actually legal, as many US states have now made marijuana, or as NZ has made sex work. It can still be regulated or taxed, but in general its fine.
  - TheOtherHobbes 8y ago
    Crimes go through a criminal justice track, and outcomes may include jail time. Illegal actions go through a civil justice track, and typically result in fines and/or some sort of civil restitution for victims. If you ignore building codes you're acting illegally. If you ignore building codes and people die you're a criminal. Which is fine as far as it goes. But criminality is often defined politically, not empirically in terms of outcomes. Sex work is complicated precisely because it's on the edge of consensus morality. It has so much moral and political baggage, and for those who care it's so difficult to manage in ways that minimise harm for all involved, that it's almost the definition of a political football. It doesn't help that authoritarians are invariably utterly hypocritical about it. Sex workers know that business is going to boom whenever a convention of self-styled moral hawks hits town. So there's always political pressure to keep that hypocrisy hidden, which makes the criminal/civil line even more of a hot-button issue than it would be anyway.

Lazare 8y ago

> Consensual sex work is mentioned, my perception is I would be more interested in data than one person's subjecting perception. > I hear of no stories where people have found happy and fulfilled lives as prostitutes One of the major points of the article is that the voices of sex workers have been driven off the internet. You can't justify censorship by saying that none of the now-censored voices are complaining. > The "women speaking truth" can only every have authentic voices if they are speaking from positions of power and security; I do not believe that this is the case for prostitutes anywhere. That is either completely false, OR by your logic nobody can ever speak about what it's like to work a retail job. Some jobs suck; sometimes the people working them don't have a lot of power and security. So either your arguing that we shouldn't listen to anyone who isn't a millionaire, or you're not aware of the voices that exist. > The illegality of prostitution is not because people are prudes, it is because prostitutes are routinely destroyed by their work. Funny how that seems to only happen in places prostitution is illegal.

zozbot123 8y ago
The problem with legalizing prostitution is that it opens up a sanctioned venue which human traffickers can use to slip under the radar. You can have the best regulation in the world and you'll still fail to have only the entirely above-board, willing sex work that the sex workers themselves would like. It's the same reason why e.g. we ban all new elephant ivory, period-- even ivory that supposedly does not come from poachers killing an endangered, wild elephant. Because if you try to allow "good, fair-trade ivory", the poachers will try their best to get their stuff in there. And when it comes to the balance between costs and benefits, it doesn't take many bad apples to spoil the whole barrel.
- Lazare 8y ago
  Good theory. That totally could be an issue. Maybe sex work is like ivory, and not like, I dunno, all the other jobs human beings do! Or maybe not. Luckily, we can check NZ, since they legalised sex work, and research has since been done to see what the answer was: http://www.gaatw.org/publications/SWorganising/NewZealand-web.pdf http://www.gaatw.org/publications/SWorganising/NewZealand-we... And actually, none of that is true! Actually it turns out that what really enables trafficking and the abuse of sex workers is situations where they can't go to the police, or where brothels have to hide their existence from the authorities entirely. Once you're legal and regulated, it's really easy for the immigration officials to show up and start checking paperwork. > you'll still fail to have only the entirely above-board, willing sex work that the sex workers themselves would like. Funny you should say that; again in the linked report it was noted that NZ does have an issue with that, but not from trafficked women, but rather from migrants. Due to anti-trafficking sentiment, the original law legalising prostitution banned people on temporary visas from working in the industry, which means people on temporary visas are the only sex workers in the country who can find themselves subjected to abusive work conditions while being unable to report it to the authorities. It makes sense, of course; everywhere you ban sex work you create a shadow that victimisation can take place in.

belorn 8y ago

There is a very easy test to check if anti-prostitution laws are prudes or about labor rights. You rewrite them into labor rights so to make prostitution illegal without including the word sex. I have not heard a single country that have managed to do this. For rather obvious reasons, it is not practical to make employment illegal where the employee is in need of money. There are countries however that do treat the problems with prostitution as a labor rights issue and resolve it similarly. For example when people think of human trafficking they think of prostitution, but human trafficking in constructions is actually several times larger. Exploitation in construction is thus a very large problem and the common solution is to impose stricter regulations so the government can catch and punish those that earn money on human suffering.