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Does LinkedIn have a prostitution problem?
- kailuowang 13y agoI deem this as an indication to the fact that LinkedIn is the de facto online social network for business.
- anxx 13y agook, in which countries do sex workers identify themselves with their name and actual profession and it is completely ok? likewho would even create a profile like this? don't other families don't trash her as a bad mother, doesn't it affect their employment prospects, are their kids or parents not harassed etc? if there is a country like that i want to live there.
- pshin45 13y agoFiction becomes reality: http://www.theonion.com/articles/area-man-still-searching-for-hookup-subculture-on,29003/ http://www.theonion.com/articles/area-man-still-searching-fo...
- hkmurakami 13y agoAs they say, "reality is stranger than fiction"
- coldcode 13y agoTechnically they are professionals connecting to customers.
- k__ 13y agoThey're preventing them from getting a normal reputation, which is kinda sad :\
- CurtMonash 13y agoNo, just with social media marketing. But the two areas are easy to confuse.
- jfb 13y agoOnly one of them provides services for cash in an honest exchange.
- CurtMonash 13y agoIn both cases the essence is the exchange of money in return for feigned affection.
- oneandoneis2 13y agoThe reason this got talked about in my workplace was that another article covering it claimed that people were even endorsing prostitutes for various skills on LinkedIn.. the mind boggles :)
- androidb 13y ago:) just as the social bookmarking buttons on porn sites, no one thinks they would be clicked yet some do it.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- carlob 13y agoCall me old fashioned, but I still don't get these articles that consist of 10 copy-pasted tweets. Where's the content? Other than the press release and some comments from random people, this has 0 information content.
- patmcguire 13y agoIt's a lazy version of Man on the Street, which news used to do a lot. The difference being 1) laziness and 2) the ability to cherry pick to a much greater extent.
- Cthulhu_ 13y agoAnd the tweets aren't even that good. Definite attempted (and failed) humor there. Everyone's a comedian.
- fnordfnordfnord 13y agoI had never thought of it before, but LinkedIn is a brilliant place for a escort to market their services. Lots of business travellers, who are often a middle-aged man travelling alone. The marks should have money, are likely to be disease and drug free, and probably these exchanges occur in a low risk environment such as a business traveler's hotel.
- mellotron 13y agoThe escorts definitely didn't miss the opportunity.
- larrys 13y agoI suspect that they also troll as follows. Friend a business person with a professional looking profile with a picture. Interact a bit. Then go for the sale. I guess that seems like to much work but in a sense it might yield a completely virgin market (business people traveling who would never think to read an ad or make pro active contact.) Almost like the bar honeypot. Add: And be able to charge a premium rate because those contacted don't have any clue of the going rate and they have been enticed before they are able to pull back (not having any viable alternatives).
- ezl 13y agoso the real reason why prostitutes use linked in isn't to FIND new clients or to create networks of whores on linked in -- it's to verify that their clients aren't cops. in a lot of places, prostitution is illegal, and clients and "service providers" alike are worried about the repercussions of getting caught. some are regular people who are trying to make money, or like their side alter ego, but don't particularly want their friends or family to find out. getting busted is scary for both parties. in order to protect themselves, they resort to ID verifications of sorts and a variety of other practices to help them increase the odds that the person they're spending their time with is not an officer of the law. a busy linked in profile, business cards, and a drivers license that all point to the same person is a pretty good sign that that person ACTUALLY has the job they claim and they're not a cop. source: i love hookers.
- adamors 13y ago> whores Can we at least call them prostitues if sex worker is too PC for HN?
- loup-vaillant 13y agoFunny, I didn't notice the negative connotation here. But maybe that's because of sentences I heard lately: "Hey, what's the problem with being a fucking whore?" (Street whore¹ in Dexter –forgot which episode.) "I have a lot of respect for whores." (witness in a radio documentary —quite moving, by the way.) [1] I swear I mean no disrespect.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- n0mad01 13y agothou shalt call things as they are, everything else is political correctness bingo -- gandhi
- kbenson 13y agoI wonder what they call themselves, and what they would be comfortable with if it wasn't used in a derogatory way. I can imagine if I a few co-workers worked at a horrible oppressing conglomerate, perhaps Veridian Dynamics, and we referred to ourselves as "drones" to denote our feelings, if management said we were no longer allowed to use this term, it would not be uplifting, it would be yet another instance of management oppression by taking away another form of expression. This example is, of course, extremely contrived, and I can see positives in removing a term from popular use as it may shift attitudes, but I wonder how that compares with the negatives to the group itself.
- kleiba 13y agoAljazeera.com article a case for Betteridge's law of headlines? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headlines https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headline...
- speeder 13y agoI am speculating that the reason LinkedIn did it, is to get distanced from legal problems, not only in relation to prostitution laws (for example, Brazil says prostitution is allowed, but facilitating prostitution is not... LinkedIn was a facilitator? Also, several other countries have equally, or even more confusing laws on the subject), but also to law enforcement efforts against sex slavery and human trafficking. I guess LinkedIn don't want the ball thrown on their court and be responsible for checking who is a real prostitute and who is a slave or a scammer.
- skreech 13y agoThe title of the article raises a good question, though: what is the rationale for clamping down on this? Have they had a real problem, or is it merely moralistic?
- jarman 13y agoPotential PR problems
- chrisvineup 13y agoNo.
- virtualritz 13y agoThe problem seems to me that sex work is stigmatized and, as a direct result of that, still not legalized and regulated in too many 1st world countries. The 1st world global cultural gap (between e.g. the US and Europe, or even northern and souther Europe) may seem small when you stroll through your average mall to shop for apparel. But it is often huge when it comes to views about morale and what is considered ok or not ok. To someone from northern Europe who is living in a country where sex work is 'ok' in most people's view, legalized anyway and regulated in recent years, this LinkedIn stuff is one of these stories that sound like they're from another, previous century.