6 ms·

Craigslist Shuts Down Personals Section After Congress Pass Bill on Trafficking (2018)

34 points by evo_9 5y ago

1cvmask 5y ago
Jeffrey Epstein and his powerful friends never needed the Internet for trafficking.
- burnte 5y ago
  They're not even a rounding error in the number of people trafficking other humans for work or sex.
harles 5y ago
This should be dated 2018 in the title. Very old news in tech terms.
- vmception 5y ago
  But a good time to revisit FOSTA/SESTA to see if those laws are worth it
  - floatingatoll 5y ago
    And then to post a relevant link about it.
  - heavyset_go 5y ago
    Agreed. I've noticed an uptick of what appears to be sex workers on dating apps. Surely some of them were trafficked, just like some were on Craiglist. I'm not sure why Craiglist personals weren't okay, but the same exact thing on Tinder or Bumble is.
    - jdavis703 5y ago
      Banning all dating services would have immediate public backlash. SESTA/FOSTA really only caused a stir among people who care about sex work or tech freedom/privacy. There was very little mainstream media coverage of it, and the little there was took a heavy slant to the anti-sex trafficking angle.
      - vmception 5y ago
        Looks like there is a constitutional challenge in progress, 9th circuit too so could go any direction after district court
    - _jal 5y ago
      Craigslist felt at risk of being targeted the same way Backpage was. Not wishing to go to jail, they chose to remove anything that could possibly be used against them.
      - dragonwriter 5y ago
        > Craigslist felt at risk of being targeted the same way Backpage was. Craigslist had already been targeted multiple times by law enforcement, and had revised the structure and policies of their personals sections multiple times to try to stop that. SESTA/FOSTA was when they gave up trying to find a way to make it work, but it wasn't just the Backpage example.
    - cowmoo728 5y ago
      Take a look at the #fmty (fly me to you) hashtag on twitter someday. Twitter has become an open market for adult services.
    - vmception 5y ago
      Its all about the liability they are willing to assume. Dont confuse that with the law itself. Its the same about wondering why one person gets culturally “cancelled” and another doesn't for the same action: The people beside them have a large enough rainy day fund and don't mind the risk. It says nothing about what the culture actually believes either way, only the risk tolerance of the wealthy backers. Huh, reminds me of the princeton study that said the same thing about progressive laws that get passed, where the culture has no effect on anything except that sometimes it coincidentally matches what wealthy special interests were already doing, with the caveat that its more of a direct democracy for the wealthy special interests but an additional level of representative democracy for everyone else.
  - _jal 5y ago
    It is. Techdirt has been excellent at tracking this stuff, as they do: https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20210728/13245147264/enough-about-fostas-unintended-consequences-they-were-always-intended.shtml https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20210728/13245147264/enoug... The short version: it is pretty obvious that it did what the people pushing it wanted it to do, but it did not do what they said it would do. They continue to lie about it in multiple ways. The same actors are currently targeting payment processors in their continued attempts to conflate and ban prostitution, trafficking, pornography, nudity and frequently sex education wherever they can. https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20211008/17285147720/prudish-mastercard-about-to-make-life-difficult-tons-websites.shtml https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20211008/17285147720/prudi...
  - tyingq 5y ago
    If it's lucrative, the listings don't go away. They just end up on sites that are out of reach of FOSTA/SESTA.
- _trampeltier 5y ago
  Now in 2021 we can see what changed. Do we live now in a so much safer world?
  - tata71 5y ago
    No, now we just have a bunch of mixed signals in the rooms for rent section....
  - fennecfoxen 5y ago
    No. Backpage, in its dealings with law enforcement, operated as a model of cooperation, transparency, and proactive outreach in these matters, and received plaudits from multiple law enforcement agencies for this. Its availability also made it more difficult for pimps and organized crime to monopolize the trade in a region, as they exploited or even trafficked women. When it was shut down and seized and its founders prosecuted, it was a win for the DoJ PR department and for dangerous sex traffickers, and a loss for the rest of the world. I’m morally against all of this myself in principle, but you can’t just endorse prohibition without considering the consequences: even if all this is bad you can’t just say “this is bad!!” as an excuse for making it significantly worse as you lie to the public and slander the operators.
  - paulgb 5y ago
    > Law enforcement officials say that it is sometimes more difficult to track traffickers, because the law pushed them further underground. Advocates say that sex workers now face higher safety risks. The removal of sites advertising sex hinders their ability to vet their clients, the advocates say, and is pushing more of them onto the streets. From Stamping Out Online Sex Trafficking May Have Pushed It Underground (Dec 2019) https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/17/technology/fosta-sex-trafficking-law.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/17/technology/fosta-sex-traf...
vmception 5y ago
Basically the threat of civil and criminal liability has prompted many sites to remove their human connection services, and others to police them more actively and pre-emptively instead of taking a completely “not our problem” approach This seems to be the stated goal of the bill, at the expense of many people. Has there been any cases or challenge of FOSTA and SESTA laws?
- jimbob45 5y ago
  Edit: I stand corrected. Dragonwriter is absolutely right that the bill had bipartisan support (even the holdouts were perfectly bipartisan).
  - jdavis703 5y ago
    The current Democratic VP has bragged about voting for the law for what it’s worth. Being “tough on crime” and promoting sexual puritanism are bipartisan interests.
  - dragonwriter 5y ago
    > Everyone blamed it on Republican overreach at the time No they didn't. > and yet the Democrats haven't moved to revoke the law. It passed the House 388-25 and the Senate 97-2. It had overwhelming support in both parties.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
encryptluks2 5y ago
I personally think them removing the personals section was a bit silly. It is like Facebook saying, we are going to remove our messenger feature because people could use it to chat about illegal stuff. Or Google saying, we are going to remove our cloud storage because people could host illegal stuff.
- anyfactor 5y ago
  Well, didn't some people accuse Wish of facilitating human trafficing through listing over-priced cabinets?
  - newbie789 5y ago
    That was Wayfair IIRC
- jdavis703 5y ago
  It was pretty clear the Congresspeople were specifically targeting online classifieds like Backpage and Craigslist (even though the law itself is vague enough to target any website operator). I don’t blame Craigslist for not wanting to face off with the Department of Justice and spend years dealing with negative PR about how they’re enabling sex trafficking.
  - encryptluks2 5y ago
    I think they saw them as easy targets to pretend like they are being productive. Sex trafficking happens on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, etc. but they aren't shutting down. The best way to prevent sex trafficking is investing in free and better education, improving resources for the poor, and providing health services and counseling.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
cm2012 5y ago
I wonder how much escort work happens through Tinder
- weird-eye-issue 5y ago
  Just happened to me yesterday
- joshxyz 5y ago
  A lot. Also on snapchat, facebook dating.
- redis_mlc 5y ago
  FYI: Most female IG influencers are considered to be pros. What's been discussed online is: You can identify pros if their photos show luxury goods with no visible means of support (online pros collect luxury handbags for either personal use, store returns for cash, or sale for cash), or multiple hotel rooms or plane trips. As far as Tindr goes, there's 2 problems: 1) sure, some pros 2) but a much bigger problem is rampant casual sex causing the destruction of establishing normal relationships - Tindr is a giant orgy. Currently 25% of US women are on antidepressants, and that's rapidly climbing, often due to failed relationships. 100% of women members are selecting the top 5% of male photos, and since those men have options (20x more in fact), they maintain temporary relationships - because they can. Tindr creates a false sense of dating abundance in women, who have a limited reproductive window. When they age out of dating in their early 30's, they're left with no family. One day men just stop swiping right, filter them out of results by age, or just hookup and ghost them.
ChrisArchitect 5y ago
anything new here since 2018? Previous discussion from when this was news: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16654698 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16654698
dokem 5y ago
Isn't human trafficking just used as a scary term for what is basically 'willful prostitution' in contexts like this? I highly doubt Craigslist is systematically used to sell slaves or anything truly nefarious given how public and easily monitor-able it is.

34 points by evo_9 5y ago

1cvmask 5y ago

Jeffrey Epstein and his powerful friends never needed the Internet for trafficking.

burnte 5y ago
They're not even a rounding error in the number of people trafficking other humans for work or sex.

harles 5y ago

This should be dated 2018 in the title. Very old news in tech terms.

vmception 5y ago
But a good time to revisit FOSTA/SESTA to see if those laws are worth it
- floatingatoll 5y ago
  And then to post a relevant link about it.
- heavyset_go 5y ago
  Agreed. I've noticed an uptick of what appears to be sex workers on dating apps. Surely some of them were trafficked, just like some were on Craiglist. I'm not sure why Craiglist personals weren't okay, but the same exact thing on Tinder or Bumble is.
  - jdavis703 5y ago
    Banning all dating services would have immediate public backlash. SESTA/FOSTA really only caused a stir among people who care about sex work or tech freedom/privacy. There was very little mainstream media coverage of it, and the little there was took a heavy slant to the anti-sex trafficking angle.
    - vmception 5y ago
      Looks like there is a constitutional challenge in progress, 9th circuit too so could go any direction after district court
  - _jal 5y ago
    Craigslist felt at risk of being targeted the same way Backpage was. Not wishing to go to jail, they chose to remove anything that could possibly be used against them.
    - dragonwriter 5y ago
      > Craigslist felt at risk of being targeted the same way Backpage was. Craigslist had already been targeted multiple times by law enforcement, and had revised the structure and policies of their personals sections multiple times to try to stop that. SESTA/FOSTA was when they gave up trying to find a way to make it work, but it wasn't just the Backpage example.
  - cowmoo728 5y ago
    Take a look at the #fmty (fly me to you) hashtag on twitter someday. Twitter has become an open market for adult services.
  - vmception 5y ago
    Its all about the liability they are willing to assume. Dont confuse that with the law itself. Its the same about wondering why one person gets culturally “cancelled” and another doesn't for the same action: The people beside them have a large enough rainy day fund and don't mind the risk. It says nothing about what the culture actually believes either way, only the risk tolerance of the wealthy backers. Huh, reminds me of the princeton study that said the same thing about progressive laws that get passed, where the culture has no effect on anything except that sometimes it coincidentally matches what wealthy special interests were already doing, with the caveat that its more of a direct democracy for the wealthy special interests but an additional level of representative democracy for everyone else.
- _jal 5y ago
  It is. Techdirt has been excellent at tracking this stuff, as they do: https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20210728/13245147264/enough-about-fostas-unintended-consequences-they-were-always-intended.shtml https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20210728/13245147264/enoug... The short version: it is pretty obvious that it did what the people pushing it wanted it to do, but it did not do what they said it would do. They continue to lie about it in multiple ways. The same actors are currently targeting payment processors in their continued attempts to conflate and ban prostitution, trafficking, pornography, nudity and frequently sex education wherever they can. https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20211008/17285147720/prudish-mastercard-about-to-make-life-difficult-tons-websites.shtml https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20211008/17285147720/prudi...
- tyingq 5y ago
  If it's lucrative, the listings don't go away. They just end up on sites that are out of reach of FOSTA/SESTA.
_trampeltier 5y ago
Now in 2021 we can see what changed. Do we live now in a so much safer world?
- tata71 5y ago
  No, now we just have a bunch of mixed signals in the rooms for rent section....
- fennecfoxen 5y ago
  No. Backpage, in its dealings with law enforcement, operated as a model of cooperation, transparency, and proactive outreach in these matters, and received plaudits from multiple law enforcement agencies for this. Its availability also made it more difficult for pimps and organized crime to monopolize the trade in a region, as they exploited or even trafficked women. When it was shut down and seized and its founders prosecuted, it was a win for the DoJ PR department and for dangerous sex traffickers, and a loss for the rest of the world. I’m morally against all of this myself in principle, but you can’t just endorse prohibition without considering the consequences: even if all this is bad you can’t just say “this is bad!!” as an excuse for making it significantly worse as you lie to the public and slander the operators.
- paulgb 5y ago
  > Law enforcement officials say that it is sometimes more difficult to track traffickers, because the law pushed them further underground. Advocates say that sex workers now face higher safety risks. The removal of sites advertising sex hinders their ability to vet their clients, the advocates say, and is pushing more of them onto the streets. From Stamping Out Online Sex Trafficking May Have Pushed It Underground (Dec 2019) https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/17/technology/fosta-sex-trafficking-law.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/17/technology/fosta-sex-traf...

vmception 5y ago

Basically the threat of civil and criminal liability has prompted many sites to remove their human connection services, and others to police them more actively and pre-emptively instead of taking a completely “not our problem” approach This seems to be the stated goal of the bill, at the expense of many people. Has there been any cases or challenge of FOSTA and SESTA laws?

jimbob45 5y ago
Edit: I stand corrected. Dragonwriter is absolutely right that the bill had bipartisan support (even the holdouts were perfectly bipartisan).
- jdavis703 5y ago
  The current Democratic VP has bragged about voting for the law for what it’s worth. Being “tough on crime” and promoting sexual puritanism are bipartisan interests.
- dragonwriter 5y ago
  > Everyone blamed it on Republican overreach at the time No they didn't. > and yet the Democrats haven't moved to revoke the law. It passed the House 388-25 and the Senate 97-2. It had overwhelming support in both parties.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

encryptluks2 5y ago

I personally think them removing the personals section was a bit silly. It is like Facebook saying, we are going to remove our messenger feature because people could use it to chat about illegal stuff. Or Google saying, we are going to remove our cloud storage because people could host illegal stuff.

anyfactor 5y ago
Well, didn't some people accuse Wish of facilitating human trafficing through listing over-priced cabinets?
- newbie789 5y ago
  That was Wayfair IIRC
jdavis703 5y ago
It was pretty clear the Congresspeople were specifically targeting online classifieds like Backpage and Craigslist (even though the law itself is vague enough to target any website operator). I don’t blame Craigslist for not wanting to face off with the Department of Justice and spend years dealing with negative PR about how they’re enabling sex trafficking.
- encryptluks2 5y ago
  I think they saw them as easy targets to pretend like they are being productive. Sex trafficking happens on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, etc. but they aren't shutting down. The best way to prevent sex trafficking is investing in free and better education, improving resources for the poor, and providing health services and counseling.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

cm2012 5y ago

I wonder how much escort work happens through Tinder

weird-eye-issue 5y ago
Just happened to me yesterday
joshxyz 5y ago
A lot. Also on snapchat, facebook dating.
redis_mlc 5y ago
FYI: Most female IG influencers are considered to be pros. What's been discussed online is: You can identify pros if their photos show luxury goods with no visible means of support (online pros collect luxury handbags for either personal use, store returns for cash, or sale for cash), or multiple hotel rooms or plane trips. As far as Tindr goes, there's 2 problems: 1) sure, some pros 2) but a much bigger problem is rampant casual sex causing the destruction of establishing normal relationships - Tindr is a giant orgy. Currently 25% of US women are on antidepressants, and that's rapidly climbing, often due to failed relationships. 100% of women members are selecting the top 5% of male photos, and since those men have options (20x more in fact), they maintain temporary relationships - because they can. Tindr creates a false sense of dating abundance in women, who have a limited reproductive window. When they age out of dating in their early 30's, they're left with no family. One day men just stop swiping right, filter them out of results by age, or just hookup and ghost them.

ChrisArchitect 5y ago

anything new here since 2018? Previous discussion from when this was news: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16654698 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16654698

dokem 5y ago

Isn't human trafficking just used as a scary term for what is basically 'willful prostitution' in contexts like this? I highly doubt Craigslist is systematically used to sell slaves or anything truly nefarious given how public and easily monitor-able it is.