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Sex workers explain why the Safe Tech Act will break the internet

130 points by elsewhen 5y ago

WarOnPrivacy 5y ago
As an abuse survivor, let me say that lawmakers and LEO did not begin to care about sex abuse, until gobs of money and power started to come with it (during 80's-90's). Before then, women and children knew (from exp) that few/no police or officials were there to protect them. Given what internet+sex-trafficking bills actually accomplish, it's fairly clear they're designed to cripple the power that the internet brings to the electorate. The trafficking rhetoric is little more than marketing.
- nickthemagicman 5y ago
  Glad you said this. If the 'government' wanted to protect sex workers a better strategy is what numerous other countries have done. Legalize the sex trade with strong provisions to protect the workers and support systems for escaping that life if they so choose. When a sex worker gets a record for being a sex worker it makes it a lot harder to escape that life. Having safe houses and required STD testing are other supportive measure for sex workers. The government does not care about the sex workers in the slightest. This is about censorship and control in the name of 'safety'. Gives them the power to take a website down in the name of safety if there's ANY questionable content on it even if there's millions of users. They will cudgel sites with it to give in to their demands for data requisition and to remove messages that they don't like...or suddenly the site will be brought down by force of law due to one person out of millions posting something questionable. Just like what Duterte did in the Philippines with his bloody drug crusade that also happened to not so coincidentally kill a bunch of his political rivals. Anytime the government tells you it's doing something for you in the name of 'safety' chances are you're about to get screwed. The average ignorant human's fear of whatever nightmare scenario the government and the media has created playing out in their head, is what ruins the world.
  - notsureaboutpg 5y ago
    This hasn't led to a decrease in trafficking in the countries that have tried it though. Many of them in Europe have become trafficking destinations for women from other countries. There's lots and lots of studies out there that show that decriminalizing prostitution does not lead to lower trafficking or better outcomes for prostitutes. Also the rhetoric we use here (defeatist, people are going to solicit sex and break the law so let's make it easier for them, etc.) is in stark contrast to how we talk about problems we actually want to fight in our societies like obesity, racism, worker mistreatment by employers, etc. In those situations we never say that people are going to do such things anyways and criminalizing it just makes those who do those crimes more unlikely to change, more unlikely to get back into society, more distrustful of the system, etc. In those situations we spend tons and tons of money at the corporate and the government level trying to teach people these behaviors are wrong and to not engage in them. Why can't we do that with people who solicit prostitutes?
    - throwaway3699 5y ago
      > obesity, racism, worker mistreatment by employers Not going to lie, but I feel most people don't care about these either. All I see are platitudes.
      - AnthonyMouse 5y ago
        It's politics. For example, the criminal justice system is all messed up. Over-criminalization, coercive plea bargains, law enforcement unaccountability etc. But we focus on police shootings of black men, which aren't actually disproportionate to the number of police encounters with black men. Because it's a thing you can put video of on the television and get people frothy about, but it's not a thing you can solve on its own because it's a consequence of all of those other things and not a cause in itself. By getting people to focus on the wrong thing, they can get votes without having to do the hard work of solving the underlying problems. Instead they give you empty symbolism -- take down statues, rename stuff -- which doesn't fix anything. More than that, because the underlying problems never get solved that way, they can keep campaigning on it forever.
- xg15 5y ago
  > let me say that lawmakers and LEO did begin to care about sex abuse, until gobs of money and power started to come with it * did -> did not ?
  - WarOnPrivacy 5y ago
    fixed. thnx.
- awb 5y ago
  What are the gobs of money and power that came in the 80s and 90s?
  - WarOnPrivacy 5y ago
    Lawmakers/LEO/Press (created and) amplified each other's narratives about child sex abuse. With that came fatter agency budgets and the rise of related orgs that could raise huge amounts of cash.
- Zancarius 5y ago
  This doesn't surprise me at all. From what a poster said down thread from your remark, it's largely platitudes. I never appreciated the nature of abuse until a friend of mine confided in me about their own experience being an abuse survivor from something that happened when they were a child. The Internet is just a high profile target. I won't say that the overwhelming majority of abuse happens among people who know the victim, but it's almost certainly close. Of the survivors I've spoken with, while this is anecdotal, it seems to me that they all knew the perpetrator personally either through church, school, family, etc. The Internet wasn't involved. If anything, targeting the Internet may actually impede one's ability to speak out against abuse and seek out others to help encourage them to speak out, find help, or approach the appropriate authorities. It reminds me of a sad story. A number of years ago, there was a pastor who found out that there had been some abuse of a child in his church. So he reported it and the perpetrator to the authorities. When the dust settled, the church committee fired him for sewing division and dissent when all he did was follow the law. That's kind of what bills like this feel like.
  - toyg 5y ago
    > I won't say that the overwhelming majority of abuse happens among people who know the victim Well, one could argue about "overwhelming", but I believe on the "majority" part there is no question, statistically speaking. So let's say it: the majority of abuse cases involve people familiar to the victim and their immediate relatives, regardless of any factor connected to the internet.
    - WarOnPrivacy 5y ago
      > the majority of abuse cases involve people familiar to the victim and their immediate relatives... This is and has always been true. >... regardless of any factor connected to the internet. The LEO narrative seems something like 'We didn't sex abuse before the internet so the internet must be responsible.' The flaw with that perspective is that police did not see sex abuse because (historically) they overwhelmingly Did. Not. Care. about children's (or women's) well being. As evidence, I offer a century of clergy (and other) sex-scandals that were rarely (or possibly never, ever, ever, ever) shut down by police - even tho the cops were the people who's actual damn job it was to put a stop to it.
- mncharity 5y ago
  > they're designed to cripple the power that the internet brings to the electorate. IIUC, they're part of Hollywood's Righteous War on Tech and its Wild-West Internet. Based on SESTA/FOSTA lobbying. So perhaps "to media consumers" rather than "electorate". Perhaps roughly: Hollywood fighting to bring law and order to the Internet (there's little good about it, and it's mostly just video packets), against media consumers steeped in entitlement and illegality, Google/BigTech's unconscionable power, and their corrupted mendacious supporters in Congress. That much press writes about this, and it's discussed here, as if trafficking was the issue... oh well. I'm reminded of a, IIRC, a Columbia Journalism Review column, roughly "why a liberal dislikes the NYTimes", describing each morning getting it and Financial Times, skimming NYT, throwing it out, and reading FT... because while FT was "of the enemy", at least it didn't misdescribe political issues as conflicts of ideas rather than of interests.
nickthemagicman 5y ago
The person pushing this bill is a Democrat. I used to be a Democrat. When did the Democrats suddenly become the party of morality and knowing what's best for you? They used to be the party of freedom.
- mindslight 5y ago
  Neither party is a party of freedom, despite their members themselves wanting freedom. The function of the parties is to appeal to the basic desire for freedom present in most of their constituents (differentiating based on cultural pain points), and then sell a similarly-flavored agenda of non-freedom in its place. Whether it's "compromises" that totally undermine the goal of a movement, or simply that pro-freedom pushes stall legislatively while the anti-freedom pushes move along well funded (by those who stand to gain). edit: I think I'm being heavily downvoted for "both sidesism" after the Trump trainwreck. But if you cannot accept the idea that what motivates the Trumpists is the desire for freedom as well, then we're doomed to repeat the same cycle.
  - nickthemagicman 5y ago
    As a person who finds no home in either party is's eye opening to see both parties demonizing the other. Outrage and Sensationalism instead of statistics, seems to drive most of the voters, whether that be on the left or on the right. The media is complicit in this with the 'if it bleeds it leads' mentality,
- ralusek 5y ago
  There are obviously some conservative elements to the Republican party, but it is fundamentally a liberal party. Democratic party, obviously, is not remotely liberal, but that has been the case for some time. That doesn't mean good or bad, just not liberal.
  - 8fGTBjZxBcHq 5y ago
    It's not totally clear to me how you're using some of these words and their meanings can change a lot depending on context. Like I would consider both the republican and democrat parties to be conservative, in the sense of generally resisting change, and liberal, in the sense of generally believing in market-based solutions to most problems. The degree to which they're devoted to those things differs, but I think what differentiates them from each other is not their stances on these items.
Jan454 5y ago
Porn & Sex-Workers are a neccessity to our society. Without it forced sex / rape would be even more prevalent. So if you are against either, you (scientifically) support rape!
- smitty1e 5y ago
  Without exactly contradicting you, I wonder at the implication of your post on the concept of free moral agency and accountability for actions.
  - Ericson2314 5y ago
    Reframe it in marginal terms: - No one says there must be sex work in the utopia. But we have it in this world, and prohibitions of vice do not work. - We utterly fail at catching and convincing rapists, let alone preventing rape with deterrence or something. The orthodox ways to prevent the crime are not working. If there is already a failure of justice and prevention, and if sex work isn't inherently bad, what's wrong with improving the lives of sex workers and getting less rape as a side effect? And even without any utilitarianism, the key would be to focus on the unpatholization of sex work as something good in its own right, with the rape reduction side effect as not being decisive.
  - icegreentea2 5y ago
    It implies that all people act and react according to circumstances (long-term and short-term). And this is something the law already acknowledges - note all the different types of homicide that exists in law. Rape is rape. But sometimes the rapist can also be a victim of something else. They can both by guilty of rape (and therefore accountable), but also a victim in need of help at the same time. In the law, we have ways to distinguish that - there is a reason why judges (a human) is typically given authority to choose actual punishment - to in take into account circumstances. Where "weird implications" start appearing is when this interacts our current popular trend of blanket applying "evil" status to people who commit certain actions. My gut feel is that this is a (understandable) response/backlash to abuse of the structure of moral relativism thinking and other post-modernist thinking by various groups. Or perhaps it's backlash against to the perceived failures of moral relativism to deliver any benefits "to the common person".
andy9775 5y ago
How do these laws affect companies like SquareSpace[1] (companies which provide a site builder and hosting)? If someone builds a site which violates these laws is SquareSpace held responsible? Is it up to SquareSpace to police the content on their customers sites (comments sections, content, etc.)? Or do they have some sort of immunity or contractual immunity from these laws which places the responsibility of content on the end customer/site owner? [1] I'm using SquareSpace as a placeholder. I think netfliy, wordpress builders and hosts, and other similar companies could also be impacted(?)
- Dracophoenix 5y ago
  IANAL so take what I say with a grain of salt. Because of SESTA/FOSTA, Section 230 no longer provides immunity for websites or website infrastructure from civil or criminal liability with regards to knowingly hosting trafficking-related content (however how "knowingly" and "trafficking-related" would be defined/interpreted in a court case, I'm not aware). Square space would theoretically be liable even if it is an intermediary/provider of infrastructure but neither a producer nor direct provider of content. Before SESTA/FOSTA, SquareSpace would have legal immunity from suits regarding user-generated content and only users would be held liable if the content was determined to be criminal. SquareSpace has not and is not legally responsible to police content of it's users. Doing so would violate the SquareSpace's 1st amendment rights as a private company. However, under third party doctrine, SquareSpace could be subpoenaed for (theoretically)narrowly tailored and relevant user information by a court of law. Netlify, wordpress and other hosts would similarly be held liable to the degree SquareSpace is: knowingly hosting trafficking-related cotent. However bigger question is how far does this go? To the registrar level (e.g. Namecheap)? The DNS (ICANN/IANA)? What about Internet Exchanges and Peering (e.g.AMS-IX)? While SESTA/FOSTA hasn't been tested at these levels, it theoretically implicates the entire infrastructure of the Internet should just one site host sex-trafficking related material. This would violate the sovereignty of other nations and gives the US government universal jurisdiction. Hopefully this can be resolved at some point by the Supreme Court. Hopefully.
  - dragonwriter 5y ago
    > Because of SESTA/FOSTA, Section 230 no longer provides immunity for websites or website infrastructure from civil or criminal liability with regards to knowingly hosting trafficking-related content §230 explicitly never limited criminal liability, and arguably didn’t limit civil liability for knowingly distributing unlawful content (publisher liability, which it expressly prevents, applies without knowledge; distributor liability, which some courts have found it implicitly prevents as well [IIRC, only the 11th Circuit had ruled on this, at the federal appellate level] applies to knowing distribution). And FOSTA-SESTA adds no-knowledge civil liability for owning, managing, or operating an information system with “reckless disregard of the fact that such conduct contributed to sex trafficking”.
known 5y ago
Sweden bans the purchase, but not the sale of sex because all sex work is exploitative https://archive.is/CsMX4 https://archive.is/CsMX4
- msla 5y ago
  That's a great way to ensure diseases spread through sex work due to the legal implications of saying you caught something from a sex worker. It isn't exactly a good way of doing things.
  - Godel_unicode 5y ago
    Why would you need to say where you got it from...?
    - geoduck14 5y ago
      Contact testing
      - Godel_unicode 5y ago
        I understand that's why the government would want to know. My point (thus the word "need" in my question) is that at least in the United States there are very few groups of people (largely healthcare/childcare workers) who are required to disclose to the state. You're frequently required to disclose to partners, but that's obviously a completely different thing. Even then, disclosing where you got it from is not a legal requirement, merely the fact of the infection.
    - msla 5y ago
      To keep them from giving it to others. Basic epidemiology.
      - Godel_unicode 5y ago
        Nope. Telling the state in no way keeps you from giving it to others. The existing legal requirement to disclose STIs to partners is targeted at that. In terms of actual epidemiology, the government just needs to know O() how many new cases have been found in a population, not specifically who has been diagnosed with what.
everyone 5y ago
I was confused by the term 'sex worker' used throughout the article. Through context it seems like they simply mean 'prostitute' ... 'sex worker' sounds to me like an umbrella term for anyone working in sex industry. Is the word 'prostitute' not pc or something?
- icegreentea2 5y ago
  I'm sure avoiding to trying to use "prostitutes" plays a part in using the term "sex worker" (this is after a PR battle - "prostitute" is a far more loaded term than sex worker... for now). But typically sex workers can also include porn actors, strippers, web-camers (if you want to count them separately from porn actors) and other professions. Basically it's both a broader term, as well as a PR move.
  - pcthrowaway 5y ago
    Also phone sex operators, though perhaps that's more a relic of the '90s
    - smegger001 5y ago
      that has moved more to cams now i think
- goatinaboat 5y ago
  Through context it seems like they simply mean 'prostitute' ... 'sex worker' sounds to me like an umbrella term for anyone working in sex industry. Is the word 'prostitute' not pc or something? An "internet sex worker" is a content creator on OnlyFans, for example.
- devmunchies 5y ago
  SaaS was already taken. So was PaaS.
- cardanome 5y ago
  The term "sex worker" is a campaign spearheaded by pimps, brothel owners and similar creatures that profit form the exploitation of women to legitimize their so called industry. The goal is to make it seem like prostitution is work like any other work and should by that logic be legalized. They try to make it seem like it is about helping prostitutes and "empowering" them and try to appeal to liberals when in reality it is a campaign that legitimizes exploitation and violence against women. https://www.spectator.com.au/2017/08/the-sex-worker-myth/ https://www.spectator.com.au/2017/08/the-sex-worker-myth/ > One of the most disturbing discoveries I made was that the loudest voices calling for legalisation and normalisation of prostitution are the people who profit from it: pimps, punters and brothel owners. They have succeeded in speaking for the women under their control. > Legalisation of prostitution in Germany, Holland and Australia has not led to a decrease in violence, HIV rates or in fewer women being murdered. I met a former ‘sex workers rights’ activist in Melbourne, Sabrinna Valisce, who, confronted with the reality of decriminalisation, had a dramatic change of heart. ‘I thought it would improve things if everything was legal and above board, but it just gave more power to the johns and the brothel-owners.
xg15 5y ago
Instead of framing this as a free speech issue, maybe the US should get its act together and make clear what its stance on pornography and sex work is in general.
- rblatz 5y ago
  The US doesn’t have a singular stance on these things. Different law makers at different times take up issues around sex for numerous reasons. Then they try to wrap it in propaganda to make it pass.
- tomjen3 5y ago
  As as outsider, the US view on sex is the most schizophrenic in the world. Can't permit Janet Jackson to show her nipple on TV, creates Games of Thrones and the modern porn industry (I was going to say runs the biggest ring of porn sites ever, but Mindgeek is actually Canadian). The US doesn't have an opinion on sex, it just has different fractions with enormously different pov that can't agree to let sleeping dogs lie. It also has the last serious Christians with political influence for any advanced nation, and they are still fighting the war on porn.
  - e3bc54b2 5y ago
    I have read that keeping the TV/movie censored for nipples and nethers is actually express effort from the porn industry. If you could see sex in regular movies, why will you pay for porn?
    - herbst 5y ago
      We have nipples in any trash TV shows and plenty of movies here in central europe and i don't think porn is less popular or anything. It could be that americans pay more for porn however that could have many other reasons.
  - chii 5y ago
    it's almost as if being a large democracy means there's many different groups of differing opinions, and no one silver bullet can satisfy it all!
loldk 5y ago
Neoliberals, video game companies, social media companies, and big tech are ALL FOR controlling their customers and trying to control what can and can't be said on a platform. This will get abused heavily by large corporations with shady amoral behaviors like Amazon, and plunge us deeper into dystopia.
mensetmanusman 5y ago
I wonder how much cheaper the entire system would be if the government just paid them to not have sex.
- sokoloff 5y ago
  How much would the government pay everyone to not be a sex worker? (If we’ve learned anything, it’s that when the government starts giving away money, lots of people are willing to take it. If all they need to do to get it is agree to not be a specific type of sex worker, I think lots of people would be interested.)
- drdeadringer 5y ago
  Honest question: How has that worked out for [at least certain types of] religion?
- mikhailt 5y ago
  There are at least three issues with this idea: 1. Not every sex worker are doing it for the money only. Many do enjoy doing this. Not every person goes to sex workers for sex but more of a "hired" companionship. 2. Demand for sex would not just disappear. Sex is human nature and sex work has been around since the beginning, it will never "stop". 3. This would increase human trafficking and more abuse to women because of 2 and it has already happened thanks to previous laws like this as mentioned in the article. This means increased costs for us taxpayers to pay for increased policing due to 3. You want to make the system cheaper? Decriminalize sex work and/or go after the sex buyers instead.
  - mensetmanusman 5y ago
    I’m not arguing on point number one, all this policy would do is make sure that the only workers that are doing this are the ones there for the reasons you state. This would reduce/filter out anyone there for necessity.
- jjk166 5y ago
  What if they never had any intention of having sex, but say they would so that they get paid not to? What if you paid them not to have sex and they had sex anyways? What if you paid them not to have sex, but then somebody forced them to anyways? It's not smart to pay people for something if there is no way to know if you've gotten what you paid for.
DoreenMichele 5y ago
So our current model for any legislation on this topic boils down to "Sex is bad. Sex in exchange for money is downright evil. We must discourage sex from happening at all and especially punish people exchanging money for sex." Historically, you see more prostitution in "Victorian" style eras of prudery. During "Hippie" style eras where ordinary women will put out for free because they actually enjoy sex, you see less sex in exchange for money. Let me remind people that marriage is the only contract that is considered void and annullable if it is not consummated with an act of sex and dividing up marital assets and monies is a big part of concerns about divorce and rightly so. Historically, a man was hired to a lot of jobs more or less on the assumption that he had a wife at home to cook for him, do the grocery shopping and clean up after him so he could focus on his job and then his money was viewed as "family money" not his personal income. She had a right to it and those rights have eroded over time. This is not at all a simple topic because if you assume that couples must marry for life ("until death do us part") and cannot divorce and yadda, then you are saying people have to stay in abusive relationships and that's all kinds of problematic. Anyway, our laws surrounding topics like this generally do a poor job of protecting the people we claim to be protecting because our mental models aren't actually about human rights. They aren't actually about things like agency, quality of life etc for women and children. They are about prudery and an assumption that sex is bad and somehow adding money to the mix makes it pure evil. And, yet, men tend to be expected to pay for dates and men tend to be expected to support their wives financially, etc. So there are lots of ways in which money is already tied to sex and in a gendered fashion. Sex workers are typically women. Their clients tend to be men. There is a lot of growing that needs to happen before we can get to a point of actually giving a damn about the welfare and agency of people who are at risk of ending up sex workers for various reasons. At the risk of having this misconstrued as usual: When I was homeless, men would straight up offer me money for sex based solely on being pretty plus very obviously poor while at the same time trying to network via HN and figure out how to adequately support myself some other way has gone very poorly for a lot of years. There are lots of factors suppressing my income. It's not just my gender. But my gender is a factor and most of the time when I bring that up, I get a lot of not great replies that boil down to people trying to deny that men here are somehow guilty of something . I'm not trying to point fingers and say "men are bad people." But the reality is that simply being female makes it hard to figure out how to connect with businessmen in a way that helps improve my bottom line and doesn't get misconstrued as me offering to date someone, in essence. I don't know how to solve that. I've worked on it a lot of years and things are less crazy making than they used to be, but I haven't found any slam dunk wins substantially moving the needle on my bottom line. So if you are inclined to be all "La la la not listening, not my problem" about how the highest ranked woman on HN finds HN not fertile ground for trying to establish an income when lots of men have no problem using it that way, then you are part of the problem here. Women tend to do sex work because it pays better than a lot of jobs that are open to women and it's amazingly hard to keep "choosing the high road" when that involves literal starvation. (For those who did not get the memo: I was openly homeless for nearly six years and an active participant here for most of that time.) So think on that. This issue is complex and cannot be resolved by just focusing on sex work per se. It isn't going to be resolved until there are other avenues for women to readily support themselves, among other things. "Just say no to sex work" when there are no ready replacements for such income for so many women is simply not a viable method of fixing the underlying social stuff that fosters current outcomes and statistical trends for this issue.
Klwohu 5y ago
As one of the many people who hold that sex work is NOT real work, and is instead deeply exploitative and nasty, I'm glad that this is being done. Sex workers in recent times have taken over Reddit, the sex worker spam is unrelenting. Not sure if it's bot-driven or what, but it's unacceptable.
- RosanaAnaDana 5y ago
  >sex work is NOT real work What a weird perspective. Do you consider performance music or performance artists to also not do real work? Do you think that successful internet sex workers are putting in less than 40 hours a week? I can't speak for them directly, but I would bet successful sex workers are putting in at least that much if not more time than that per week to ensure their business is successful. In fact I would guess (and I'd love to hear from a professional) that they prob burning the candle if they expect to build their business. Such a weird perspective to have. What is it that makes sex work not work relative to other kinds of creative/ performance based 'work'? I mean, even a greeter at walmart is putting on a kind of show, at a fundamental level, whats the difference? Is it not enough effort in your perspective? Not enough time per unit effort? Is it that they get paid to much? Too little? In your perspective, what qualifies as 'real' work? Is a lecture at a university 'real' work (trading your time and a perspective, only communicated; nothing materially trades hands) not real work? Is a laborer putting up concrete block not real work (trading their body and their time for money)? Is marketing not real work (you don't create anything)? Is management not real work (you don't explicitly 'make' anything? Even just in asking the question, it makes me consider that you may have a poor definition of what 'work' is if you don't consider modern sex work as 'work'. I'm interested to hear how you define work.
  - Klwohu 5y ago
    You were more interested in delivering a canned lecture. I don't have to justify myself to such a rude person. Sex work is NOT real work, that's not just an odd perspective, it's the majority opinion.
    - Alekhine 5y ago
melff 5y ago
I haven't read the Act myself but judging from the information in the article framing this as having a special impact Sex Workers in specific seems odd to me. Talking about the role and responsibilities of platforms, whether we should think of them as a "space" where people can talk, like ISPs or the Mail Service or more like a publisher, the implication on freedom of speech vs freedom not to be offended, etc, would be more productive and cover the impact of this Act more broadly and more accurate than trough the lenses of a specific profession. The issue of over policing and censorship hasn't anything to do with sex work, they just a one group that will likely be affected but many, many more people who are not sex workers will be affected too. To me it sounds like talking about the performance implications of a processor design decision for fortan-based web servers, I mean yes sure they will be affected by reducing core count in favor of a bigger cache, but so will a lot of things and there is nothing special about them to warrant them being the focus of such an article. If this article was targeted at sex workers and/or their clients specifically it would make sense, but vice is a mainstream thing isn't it? Also I hate this kind of click-bait articles SAFE TECH will not break the internet and even if it did, engineers, tech-pioneers, relevant companies like Google or Microsoft, etc would be way more qualified to explain why it will than sex workers.
snicker7 5y ago
> the law passed in 1996 to protect free speech online by offering legal protection for online platforms and websites. Funny that Vice didn't mention that the Communication Decency Act was actually passed to ban porn on the Internet.
- syspec 5y ago
  Interesting, I didn't know that could you share more info?
  - saurik 5y ago
    It is kind of literally in the name of the bill, so it is really easy to find tons of references to such... here is a random one I found on Google that is nice for being written in the same era. https://digitalcommons.usu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1289&context=honors https://digitalcommons.usu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1...
a0-prw 5y ago
Just another example of the anti-human, neo-puritanical attack on human freedom.
Brian_K_White 5y ago
When alcohol was illegal, nominally because alcohol is harmful, the result was poison alcohol and violent crime gangs. Same thing here. The very act of "protecting" the victims creates even more victims and worse victimization, by driving the activity underground and outside of any civilizing public view. If they were actually concerned about protecting children and women from sexual abuse, then they would regulate, license, inspect, and tax sex work, not try to ban it. Instead what they care about is pleasing the significant number of voters who publicly behave as though any form of sex or interpersonal relationship other than what they do for themselves, is an inarguable innate objective harm like theft, slavery, maiming, murder, where no one has any valid right to freedom about it. The arguments don't hold any water, but that doesn't matter in a popularity contest.
denton-scratch 5y ago
“The SAFE TECH Act would mean I can’t afford to run my own website and will lose income from many other sites. It will impact any social media platforms I use for marketing,” Do they have to use a US-based platform? If the US won't stand by its own 1st Amendment, take your business elsewhere. I assume the clients will follow. (I'm sincerely asking; I assume there are facts that I'm not familiar with)

130 points by elsewhen 5y ago

As an abuse survivor, let me say that lawmakers and LEO did not begin to care about sex abuse, until gobs of money and power started to come with it (during 80's-90's). Before then, women and children knew (from exp) that few/no police or officials were there to protect them. Given what internet+sex-trafficking bills actually accomplish, it's fairly clear they're designed to cripple the power that the internet brings to the electorate. The trafficking rhetoric is little more than marketing.

nickthemagicman 5y ago
Glad you said this. If the 'government' wanted to protect sex workers a better strategy is what numerous other countries have done. Legalize the sex trade with strong provisions to protect the workers and support systems for escaping that life if they so choose. When a sex worker gets a record for being a sex worker it makes it a lot harder to escape that life. Having safe houses and required STD testing are other supportive measure for sex workers. The government does not care about the sex workers in the slightest. This is about censorship and control in the name of 'safety'. Gives them the power to take a website down in the name of safety if there's ANY questionable content on it even if there's millions of users. They will cudgel sites with it to give in to their demands for data requisition and to remove messages that they don't like...or suddenly the site will be brought down by force of law due to one person out of millions posting something questionable. Just like what Duterte did in the Philippines with his bloody drug crusade that also happened to not so coincidentally kill a bunch of his political rivals. Anytime the government tells you it's doing something for you in the name of 'safety' chances are you're about to get screwed. The average ignorant human's fear of whatever nightmare scenario the government and the media has created playing out in their head, is what ruins the world.
- notsureaboutpg 5y ago
  This hasn't led to a decrease in trafficking in the countries that have tried it though. Many of them in Europe have become trafficking destinations for women from other countries. There's lots and lots of studies out there that show that decriminalizing prostitution does not lead to lower trafficking or better outcomes for prostitutes. Also the rhetoric we use here (defeatist, people are going to solicit sex and break the law so let's make it easier for them, etc.) is in stark contrast to how we talk about problems we actually want to fight in our societies like obesity, racism, worker mistreatment by employers, etc. In those situations we never say that people are going to do such things anyways and criminalizing it just makes those who do those crimes more unlikely to change, more unlikely to get back into society, more distrustful of the system, etc. In those situations we spend tons and tons of money at the corporate and the government level trying to teach people these behaviors are wrong and to not engage in them. Why can't we do that with people who solicit prostitutes?
  - throwaway3699 5y ago
    > obesity, racism, worker mistreatment by employers Not going to lie, but I feel most people don't care about these either. All I see are platitudes.
    - AnthonyMouse 5y ago
      It's politics. For example, the criminal justice system is all messed up. Over-criminalization, coercive plea bargains, law enforcement unaccountability etc. But we focus on police shootings of black men, which aren't actually disproportionate to the number of police encounters with black men. Because it's a thing you can put video of on the television and get people frothy about, but it's not a thing you can solve on its own because it's a consequence of all of those other things and not a cause in itself. By getting people to focus on the wrong thing, they can get votes without having to do the hard work of solving the underlying problems. Instead they give you empty symbolism -- take down statues, rename stuff -- which doesn't fix anything. More than that, because the underlying problems never get solved that way, they can keep campaigning on it forever.
xg15 5y ago
> let me say that lawmakers and LEO did begin to care about sex abuse, until gobs of money and power started to come with it * did -> did not ?
- WarOnPrivacy 5y ago
  fixed. thnx.
awb 5y ago
What are the gobs of money and power that came in the 80s and 90s?
- WarOnPrivacy 5y ago
  Lawmakers/LEO/Press (created and) amplified each other's narratives about child sex abuse. With that came fatter agency budgets and the rise of related orgs that could raise huge amounts of cash.
Zancarius 5y ago
This doesn't surprise me at all. From what a poster said down thread from your remark, it's largely platitudes. I never appreciated the nature of abuse until a friend of mine confided in me about their own experience being an abuse survivor from something that happened when they were a child. The Internet is just a high profile target. I won't say that the overwhelming majority of abuse happens among people who know the victim, but it's almost certainly close. Of the survivors I've spoken with, while this is anecdotal, it seems to me that they all knew the perpetrator personally either through church, school, family, etc. The Internet wasn't involved. If anything, targeting the Internet may actually impede one's ability to speak out against abuse and seek out others to help encourage them to speak out, find help, or approach the appropriate authorities. It reminds me of a sad story. A number of years ago, there was a pastor who found out that there had been some abuse of a child in his church. So he reported it and the perpetrator to the authorities. When the dust settled, the church committee fired him for sewing division and dissent when all he did was follow the law. That's kind of what bills like this feel like.
- toyg 5y ago
  > I won't say that the overwhelming majority of abuse happens among people who know the victim Well, one could argue about "overwhelming", but I believe on the "majority" part there is no question, statistically speaking. So let's say it: the majority of abuse cases involve people familiar to the victim and their immediate relatives, regardless of any factor connected to the internet.
  - WarOnPrivacy 5y ago
    > the majority of abuse cases involve people familiar to the victim and their immediate relatives... This is and has always been true. >... regardless of any factor connected to the internet. The LEO narrative seems something like 'We didn't sex abuse before the internet so the internet must be responsible.' The flaw with that perspective is that police did not see sex abuse because (historically) they overwhelmingly Did. Not. Care. about children's (or women's) well being. As evidence, I offer a century of clergy (and other) sex-scandals that were rarely (or possibly never, ever, ever, ever) shut down by police - even tho the cops were the people who's actual damn job it was to put a stop to it.
mncharity 5y ago
> they're designed to cripple the power that the internet brings to the electorate. IIUC, they're part of Hollywood's Righteous War on Tech and its Wild-West Internet. Based on SESTA/FOSTA lobbying. So perhaps "to media consumers" rather than "electorate". Perhaps roughly: Hollywood fighting to bring law and order to the Internet (there's little good about it, and it's mostly just video packets), against media consumers steeped in entitlement and illegality, Google/BigTech's unconscionable power, and their corrupted mendacious supporters in Congress. That much press writes about this, and it's discussed here, as if trafficking was the issue... oh well. I'm reminded of a, IIRC, a Columbia Journalism Review column, roughly "why a liberal dislikes the NYTimes", describing each morning getting it and Financial Times, skimming NYT, throwing it out, and reading FT... because while FT was "of the enemy", at least it didn't misdescribe political issues as conflicts of ideas rather than of interests.

nickthemagicman 5y ago

The person pushing this bill is a Democrat. I used to be a Democrat. When did the Democrats suddenly become the party of morality and knowing what's best for you? They used to be the party of freedom.

mindslight 5y ago
Neither party is a party of freedom, despite their members themselves wanting freedom. The function of the parties is to appeal to the basic desire for freedom present in most of their constituents (differentiating based on cultural pain points), and then sell a similarly-flavored agenda of non-freedom in its place. Whether it's "compromises" that totally undermine the goal of a movement, or simply that pro-freedom pushes stall legislatively while the anti-freedom pushes move along well funded (by those who stand to gain). edit: I think I'm being heavily downvoted for "both sidesism" after the Trump trainwreck. But if you cannot accept the idea that what motivates the Trumpists is the desire for freedom as well, then we're doomed to repeat the same cycle.
- nickthemagicman 5y ago
  As a person who finds no home in either party is's eye opening to see both parties demonizing the other. Outrage and Sensationalism instead of statistics, seems to drive most of the voters, whether that be on the left or on the right. The media is complicit in this with the 'if it bleeds it leads' mentality,
ralusek 5y ago
There are obviously some conservative elements to the Republican party, but it is fundamentally a liberal party. Democratic party, obviously, is not remotely liberal, but that has been the case for some time. That doesn't mean good or bad, just not liberal.
- 8fGTBjZxBcHq 5y ago
  It's not totally clear to me how you're using some of these words and their meanings can change a lot depending on context. Like I would consider both the republican and democrat parties to be conservative, in the sense of generally resisting change, and liberal, in the sense of generally believing in market-based solutions to most problems. The degree to which they're devoted to those things differs, but I think what differentiates them from each other is not their stances on these items.

Jan454 5y ago

Porn & Sex-Workers are a neccessity to our society. Without it forced sex / rape would be even more prevalent. So if you are against either, you (scientifically) support rape!

smitty1e 5y ago
Without exactly contradicting you, I wonder at the implication of your post on the concept of free moral agency and accountability for actions.
- Ericson2314 5y ago
  Reframe it in marginal terms: - No one says there must be sex work in the utopia. But we have it in this world, and prohibitions of vice do not work. - We utterly fail at catching and convincing rapists, let alone preventing rape with deterrence or something. The orthodox ways to prevent the crime are not working. If there is already a failure of justice and prevention, and if sex work isn't inherently bad, what's wrong with improving the lives of sex workers and getting less rape as a side effect? And even without any utilitarianism, the key would be to focus on the unpatholization of sex work as something good in its own right, with the rape reduction side effect as not being decisive.
- icegreentea2 5y ago
  It implies that all people act and react according to circumstances (long-term and short-term). And this is something the law already acknowledges - note all the different types of homicide that exists in law. Rape is rape. But sometimes the rapist can also be a victim of something else. They can both by guilty of rape (and therefore accountable), but also a victim in need of help at the same time. In the law, we have ways to distinguish that - there is a reason why judges (a human) is typically given authority to choose actual punishment - to in take into account circumstances. Where "weird implications" start appearing is when this interacts our current popular trend of blanket applying "evil" status to people who commit certain actions. My gut feel is that this is a (understandable) response/backlash to abuse of the structure of moral relativism thinking and other post-modernist thinking by various groups. Or perhaps it's backlash against to the perceived failures of moral relativism to deliver any benefits "to the common person".

andy9775 5y ago

How do these laws affect companies like SquareSpace[1] (companies which provide a site builder and hosting)? If someone builds a site which violates these laws is SquareSpace held responsible? Is it up to SquareSpace to police the content on their customers sites (comments sections, content, etc.)? Or do they have some sort of immunity or contractual immunity from these laws which places the responsibility of content on the end customer/site owner? [1] I'm using SquareSpace as a placeholder. I think netfliy, wordpress builders and hosts, and other similar companies could also be impacted(?)

Dracophoenix 5y ago
IANAL so take what I say with a grain of salt. Because of SESTA/FOSTA, Section 230 no longer provides immunity for websites or website infrastructure from civil or criminal liability with regards to knowingly hosting trafficking-related content (however how "knowingly" and "trafficking-related" would be defined/interpreted in a court case, I'm not aware). Square space would theoretically be liable even if it is an intermediary/provider of infrastructure but neither a producer nor direct provider of content. Before SESTA/FOSTA, SquareSpace would have legal immunity from suits regarding user-generated content and only users would be held liable if the content was determined to be criminal. SquareSpace has not and is not legally responsible to police content of it's users. Doing so would violate the SquareSpace's 1st amendment rights as a private company. However, under third party doctrine, SquareSpace could be subpoenaed for (theoretically)narrowly tailored and relevant user information by a court of law. Netlify, wordpress and other hosts would similarly be held liable to the degree SquareSpace is: knowingly hosting trafficking-related cotent. However bigger question is how far does this go? To the registrar level (e.g. Namecheap)? The DNS (ICANN/IANA)? What about Internet Exchanges and Peering (e.g.AMS-IX)? While SESTA/FOSTA hasn't been tested at these levels, it theoretically implicates the entire infrastructure of the Internet should just one site host sex-trafficking related material. This would violate the sovereignty of other nations and gives the US government universal jurisdiction. Hopefully this can be resolved at some point by the Supreme Court. Hopefully.
- dragonwriter 5y ago
  > Because of SESTA/FOSTA, Section 230 no longer provides immunity for websites or website infrastructure from civil or criminal liability with regards to knowingly hosting trafficking-related content §230 explicitly never limited criminal liability, and arguably didn’t limit civil liability for knowingly distributing unlawful content (publisher liability, which it expressly prevents, applies without knowledge; distributor liability, which some courts have found it implicitly prevents as well [IIRC, only the 11th Circuit had ruled on this, at the federal appellate level] applies to knowing distribution). And FOSTA-SESTA adds no-knowledge civil liability for owning, managing, or operating an information system with “reckless disregard of the fact that such conduct contributed to sex trafficking”.

known 5y ago

Sweden bans the purchase, but not the sale of sex because all sex work is exploitative https://archive.is/CsMX4 https://archive.is/CsMX4

msla 5y ago
That's a great way to ensure diseases spread through sex work due to the legal implications of saying you caught something from a sex worker. It isn't exactly a good way of doing things.
- Godel_unicode 5y ago
  Why would you need to say where you got it from...?
  - geoduck14 5y ago
    Contact testing
    - Godel_unicode 5y ago
      I understand that's why the government would want to know. My point (thus the word "need" in my question) is that at least in the United States there are very few groups of people (largely healthcare/childcare workers) who are required to disclose to the state. You're frequently required to disclose to partners, but that's obviously a completely different thing. Even then, disclosing where you got it from is not a legal requirement, merely the fact of the infection.
  - msla 5y ago
    To keep them from giving it to others. Basic epidemiology.
    - Godel_unicode 5y ago
      Nope. Telling the state in no way keeps you from giving it to others. The existing legal requirement to disclose STIs to partners is targeted at that. In terms of actual epidemiology, the government just needs to know O() how many new cases have been found in a population, not specifically who has been diagnosed with what.

everyone 5y ago

I was confused by the term 'sex worker' used throughout the article. Through context it seems like they simply mean 'prostitute' ... 'sex worker' sounds to me like an umbrella term for anyone working in sex industry. Is the word 'prostitute' not pc or something?

icegreentea2 5y ago
I'm sure avoiding to trying to use "prostitutes" plays a part in using the term "sex worker" (this is after a PR battle - "prostitute" is a far more loaded term than sex worker... for now). But typically sex workers can also include porn actors, strippers, web-camers (if you want to count them separately from porn actors) and other professions. Basically it's both a broader term, as well as a PR move.
- pcthrowaway 5y ago
  Also phone sex operators, though perhaps that's more a relic of the '90s
  - smegger001 5y ago
    that has moved more to cams now i think
goatinaboat 5y ago
Through context it seems like they simply mean 'prostitute' ... 'sex worker' sounds to me like an umbrella term for anyone working in sex industry. Is the word 'prostitute' not pc or something? An "internet sex worker" is a content creator on OnlyFans, for example.
devmunchies 5y ago
SaaS was already taken. So was PaaS.
cardanome 5y ago
The term "sex worker" is a campaign spearheaded by pimps, brothel owners and similar creatures that profit form the exploitation of women to legitimize their so called industry. The goal is to make it seem like prostitution is work like any other work and should by that logic be legalized. They try to make it seem like it is about helping prostitutes and "empowering" them and try to appeal to liberals when in reality it is a campaign that legitimizes exploitation and violence against women. https://www.spectator.com.au/2017/08/the-sex-worker-myth/ https://www.spectator.com.au/2017/08/the-sex-worker-myth/ > One of the most disturbing discoveries I made was that the loudest voices calling for legalisation and normalisation of prostitution are the people who profit from it: pimps, punters and brothel owners. They have succeeded in speaking for the women under their control. > Legalisation of prostitution in Germany, Holland and Australia has not led to a decrease in violence, HIV rates or in fewer women being murdered. I met a former ‘sex workers rights’ activist in Melbourne, Sabrinna Valisce, who, confronted with the reality of decriminalisation, had a dramatic change of heart. ‘I thought it would improve things if everything was legal and above board, but it just gave more power to the johns and the brothel-owners.

xg15 5y ago

Instead of framing this as a free speech issue, maybe the US should get its act together and make clear what its stance on pornography and sex work is in general.

rblatz 5y ago
The US doesn’t have a singular stance on these things. Different law makers at different times take up issues around sex for numerous reasons. Then they try to wrap it in propaganda to make it pass.
tomjen3 5y ago
As as outsider, the US view on sex is the most schizophrenic in the world. Can't permit Janet Jackson to show her nipple on TV, creates Games of Thrones and the modern porn industry (I was going to say runs the biggest ring of porn sites ever, but Mindgeek is actually Canadian). The US doesn't have an opinion on sex, it just has different fractions with enormously different pov that can't agree to let sleeping dogs lie. It also has the last serious Christians with political influence for any advanced nation, and they are still fighting the war on porn.
- e3bc54b2 5y ago
  I have read that keeping the TV/movie censored for nipples and nethers is actually express effort from the porn industry. If you could see sex in regular movies, why will you pay for porn?
  - herbst 5y ago
    We have nipples in any trash TV shows and plenty of movies here in central europe and i don't think porn is less popular or anything. It could be that americans pay more for porn however that could have many other reasons.
- chii 5y ago
  it's almost as if being a large democracy means there's many different groups of differing opinions, and no one silver bullet can satisfy it all!

loldk 5y ago

Neoliberals, video game companies, social media companies, and big tech are ALL FOR controlling their customers and trying to control what can and can't be said on a platform. This will get abused heavily by large corporations with shady amoral behaviors like Amazon, and plunge us deeper into dystopia.

mensetmanusman 5y ago

I wonder how much cheaper the entire system would be if the government just paid them to not have sex.

sokoloff 5y ago
How much would the government pay everyone to not be a sex worker? (If we’ve learned anything, it’s that when the government starts giving away money, lots of people are willing to take it. If all they need to do to get it is agree to not be a specific type of sex worker, I think lots of people would be interested.)
drdeadringer 5y ago
Honest question: How has that worked out for [at least certain types of] religion?
mikhailt 5y ago
There are at least three issues with this idea: 1. Not every sex worker are doing it for the money only. Many do enjoy doing this. Not every person goes to sex workers for sex but more of a "hired" companionship. 2. Demand for sex would not just disappear. Sex is human nature and sex work has been around since the beginning, it will never "stop". 3. This would increase human trafficking and more abuse to women because of 2 and it has already happened thanks to previous laws like this as mentioned in the article. This means increased costs for us taxpayers to pay for increased policing due to 3. You want to make the system cheaper? Decriminalize sex work and/or go after the sex buyers instead.
- mensetmanusman 5y ago
  I’m not arguing on point number one, all this policy would do is make sure that the only workers that are doing this are the ones there for the reasons you state. This would reduce/filter out anyone there for necessity.
jjk166 5y ago
What if they never had any intention of having sex, but say they would so that they get paid not to? What if you paid them not to have sex and they had sex anyways? What if you paid them not to have sex, but then somebody forced them to anyways? It's not smart to pay people for something if there is no way to know if you've gotten what you paid for.

DoreenMichele 5y ago

So our current model for any legislation on this topic boils down to "Sex is bad. Sex in exchange for money is downright evil. We must discourage sex from happening at all and especially punish people exchanging money for sex." Historically, you see more prostitution in "Victorian" style eras of prudery. During "Hippie" style eras where ordinary women will put out for free because they actually enjoy sex, you see less sex in exchange for money. Let me remind people that marriage is the only contract that is considered void and annullable if it is not consummated with an act of sex and dividing up marital assets and monies is a big part of concerns about divorce and rightly so. Historically, a man was hired to a lot of jobs more or less on the assumption that he had a wife at home to cook for him, do the grocery shopping and clean up after him so he could focus on his job and then his money was viewed as "family money" not his personal income. She had a right to it and those rights have eroded over time. This is not at all a simple topic because if you assume that couples must marry for life ("until death do us part") and cannot divorce and yadda, then you are saying people have to stay in abusive relationships and that's all kinds of problematic. Anyway, our laws surrounding topics like this generally do a poor job of protecting the people we claim to be protecting because our mental models aren't actually about human rights. They aren't actually about things like agency, quality of life etc for women and children. They are about prudery and an assumption that sex is bad and somehow adding money to the mix makes it pure evil. And, yet, men tend to be expected to pay for dates and men tend to be expected to support their wives financially, etc. So there are lots of ways in which money is already tied to sex and in a gendered fashion. Sex workers are typically women. Their clients tend to be men. There is a lot of growing that needs to happen before we can get to a point of actually giving a damn about the welfare and agency of people who are at risk of ending up sex workers for various reasons. At the risk of having this misconstrued as usual: When I was homeless, men would straight up offer me money for sex based solely on being pretty plus very obviously poor while at the same time trying to network via HN and figure out how to adequately support myself some other way has gone very poorly for a lot of years. There are lots of factors suppressing my income. It's not just my gender. But my gender is a factor and most of the time when I bring that up, I get a lot of not great replies that boil down to people trying to deny that men here are somehow guilty of something . I'm not trying to point fingers and say "men are bad people." But the reality is that simply being female makes it hard to figure out how to connect with businessmen in a way that helps improve my bottom line and doesn't get misconstrued as me offering to date someone, in essence. I don't know how to solve that. I've worked on it a lot of years and things are less crazy making than they used to be, but I haven't found any slam dunk wins substantially moving the needle on my bottom line. So if you are inclined to be all "La la la not listening, not my problem" about how the highest ranked woman on HN finds HN not fertile ground for trying to establish an income when lots of men have no problem using it that way, then you are part of the problem here. Women tend to do sex work because it pays better than a lot of jobs that are open to women and it's amazingly hard to keep "choosing the high road" when that involves literal starvation. (For those who did not get the memo: I was openly homeless for nearly six years and an active participant here for most of that time.) So think on that. This issue is complex and cannot be resolved by just focusing on sex work per se. It isn't going to be resolved until there are other avenues for women to readily support themselves, among other things. "Just say no to sex work" when there are no ready replacements for such income for so many women is simply not a viable method of fixing the underlying social stuff that fosters current outcomes and statistical trends for this issue.

Klwohu 5y ago

As one of the many people who hold that sex work is NOT real work, and is instead deeply exploitative and nasty, I'm glad that this is being done. Sex workers in recent times have taken over Reddit, the sex worker spam is unrelenting. Not sure if it's bot-driven or what, but it's unacceptable.

RosanaAnaDana 5y ago
>sex work is NOT real work What a weird perspective. Do you consider performance music or performance artists to also not do real work? Do you think that successful internet sex workers are putting in less than 40 hours a week? I can't speak for them directly, but I would bet successful sex workers are putting in at least that much if not more time than that per week to ensure their business is successful. In fact I would guess (and I'd love to hear from a professional) that they prob burning the candle if they expect to build their business. Such a weird perspective to have. What is it that makes sex work not work relative to other kinds of creative/ performance based 'work'? I mean, even a greeter at walmart is putting on a kind of show, at a fundamental level, whats the difference? Is it not enough effort in your perspective? Not enough time per unit effort? Is it that they get paid to much? Too little? In your perspective, what qualifies as 'real' work? Is a lecture at a university 'real' work (trading your time and a perspective, only communicated; nothing materially trades hands) not real work? Is a laborer putting up concrete block not real work (trading their body and their time for money)? Is marketing not real work (you don't create anything)? Is management not real work (you don't explicitly 'make' anything? Even just in asking the question, it makes me consider that you may have a poor definition of what 'work' is if you don't consider modern sex work as 'work'. I'm interested to hear how you define work.
- Klwohu 5y ago
  You were more interested in delivering a canned lecture. I don't have to justify myself to such a rude person. Sex work is NOT real work, that's not just an odd perspective, it's the majority opinion.
  - Alekhine 5y ago

melff 5y ago

I haven't read the Act myself but judging from the information in the article framing this as having a special impact Sex Workers in specific seems odd to me. Talking about the role and responsibilities of platforms, whether we should think of them as a "space" where people can talk, like ISPs or the Mail Service or more like a publisher, the implication on freedom of speech vs freedom not to be offended, etc, would be more productive and cover the impact of this Act more broadly and more accurate than trough the lenses of a specific profession. The issue of over policing and censorship hasn't anything to do with sex work, they just a one group that will likely be affected but many, many more people who are not sex workers will be affected too. To me it sounds like talking about the performance implications of a processor design decision for fortan-based web servers, I mean yes sure they will be affected by reducing core count in favor of a bigger cache, but so will a lot of things and there is nothing special about them to warrant them being the focus of such an article. If this article was targeted at sex workers and/or their clients specifically it would make sense, but vice is a mainstream thing isn't it? Also I hate this kind of click-bait articles SAFE TECH will not break the internet and even if it did, engineers, tech-pioneers, relevant companies like Google or Microsoft, etc would be way more qualified to explain why it will than sex workers.

snicker7 5y ago

> the law passed in 1996 to protect free speech online by offering legal protection for online platforms and websites. Funny that Vice didn't mention that the Communication Decency Act was actually passed to ban porn on the Internet.

syspec 5y ago
Interesting, I didn't know that could you share more info?
- saurik 5y ago
  It is kind of literally in the name of the bill, so it is really easy to find tons of references to such... here is a random one I found on Google that is nice for being written in the same era. https://digitalcommons.usu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1289&context=honors https://digitalcommons.usu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1...

a0-prw 5y ago

Just another example of the anti-human, neo-puritanical attack on human freedom.

Brian_K_White 5y ago

When alcohol was illegal, nominally because alcohol is harmful, the result was poison alcohol and violent crime gangs. Same thing here. The very act of "protecting" the victims creates even more victims and worse victimization, by driving the activity underground and outside of any civilizing public view. If they were actually concerned about protecting children and women from sexual abuse, then they would regulate, license, inspect, and tax sex work, not try to ban it. Instead what they care about is pleasing the significant number of voters who publicly behave as though any form of sex or interpersonal relationship other than what they do for themselves, is an inarguable innate objective harm like theft, slavery, maiming, murder, where no one has any valid right to freedom about it. The arguments don't hold any water, but that doesn't matter in a popularity contest.

denton-scratch 5y ago

“The SAFE TECH Act would mean I can’t afford to run my own website and will lose income from many other sites. It will impact any social media platforms I use for marketing,” Do they have to use a US-based platform? If the US won't stand by its own 1st Amendment, take your business elsewhere. I assume the clients will follow. (I'm sincerely asking; I assume there are facts that I'm not familiar with)