Backpage Raided, CEO Arrested on Sex-Trafficking Charges • Hacker News Board

Re: Backpage Raided, CEO Arrested on Sex-Trafficking Charges

#111

Post by random_upvoter » Fri, Oct 07, 2016, 8:40 AM UTC

imtringued wrote: post #79

empthought wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If that's the fiction you need to tell yourself to avoid feeling shame at condoning the use of prostitutes, I guess I can't really stop you.

The sex workers don't care about your morals. They have different morals than you and care about different things. Stop telling them and other people what morals they should have. Regulated prostitution may be bad in your eyes but unregulated prostitution is even worse for those who are already in this industry. Don't let perfect be the enemy of good.

The heart of the matter is simple: if you buy the services of a prostitute, you have little means of knowing his/her backstory. She may be doing this willingly, or she may have been coerced. So you are willingly taking the risk that you're raping somebody.

The conclusion is that it is an immoral act to visit a prostitute. And that's all you need to know really.

Oh and here's another dirty little secret for you: a good percentage of the customers do it exactly because they LIKE the rapey aspect of it. The world is a darker place than you may prefer to believe.

Re: Backpage Raided, CEO Arrested on Sex-Trafficking Charges

#112

Post by chopin » Fri, Oct 07, 2016, 8:44 AM UTC

rayiner wrote: post #36

1024core wrote: post #21

Why is it that in such cases, the government reaches for the CEO right away; but when Wells Fargo employees open millions of fraudulent accounts, it's not the CEO's fault? If I were to commit identity theft (which is basically what the WF employees did), then I would be facing jail time; why hasn't anyone in WF been charged with criminal fraud yet? Why not the CEO?

You're comparing apples and oranges. The CEO of a small internet company almost certainly has a hand in everything the company does. The CEO of a large corporation has no idea what the line workers are doing.[1] If a bunch of Yahoo employees had gone off and run as sex-trafficking site off Yahoo's servers, they wouldn't go arrest Marissa Mayer. Not because "lobbying" but because that would be stupid and unreasonable.…

>The CEO of a small internet company almost certainly has a hand in everything the company does. The CEO of a large corporation has no idea what the line workers are doing.

If that's the case they should be paid like the CEO of a small internet company. You take the money, you take the responsibility.

Re: Backpage Raided, CEO Arrested on Sex-Trafficking Charges

#113

Post by barry-cotter » Fri, Oct 07, 2016, 8:52 AM UTC

empthought wrote: post #84

imtringued wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The sex workers don't care about your morals. They have different morals than you and care about different things. Stop telling them and other people what morals they should have. Regulated prostitution may be bad in your eyes but unregulated prostitution is even worse for those who are already in this industry. Don't let perfect be the enemy of good.

We have a perfectly good approach already; it's called the Nordic model. Arrest johns, not prostitutes. And there are thousands of former sex workers that will give you an earful about what you think you know about prostitution and what prostitutes think.

That's the Nordic model where the police tell a landlord that if they don't evict their whore tenants they're profiting from prostitution, which is a crime, right?

Re: Backpage Raided, CEO Arrested on Sex-Trafficking Charges

#114

Post by Chris2048 » Fri, Oct 07, 2016, 9:01 AM UTC

tuxracer wrote: post #34

niftich wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's idealism on both sides of the argument. On one hand, there are those who believe that conducting these arrangements in the open is safer for all involved parties. On the other hand, there are those who believe that sex work can never truly be consensual, because even if consent is given, a sex worker may have felt pressured to seek this life because all other choices available to them to make a living and att…

> there are those who believe that sex work can never truly be consensual...idealized circumstances free of such pressures, few people would choose sex work In idealized circumstances free of economic pressures many of us would spent all day at the beach. It's great many found their dream career and are getting paid to do what they love. But for most what work is just work, a means to an end. Not sure why sex workers…

Anyone can be a janitor, it is a lot harder to be a male prostitute (at scale).

Re: Backpage Raided, CEO Arrested on Sex-Trafficking Charges

#115

Post by makomk » Fri, Oct 07, 2016, 9:11 AM UTC

dzdt wrote: post #91

1024core wrote: post #21

Why is it that in such cases, the government reaches for the CEO right away; but when Wells Fargo employees open millions of fraudulent accounts, it's not the CEO's fault? If I were to commit identity theft (which is basically what the WF employees did), then I would be facing jail time; why hasn't anyone in WF been charged with criminal fraud yet? Why not the CEO?

I think Matt Levine's take on this is right on: https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2016-09-09/wells-far... . Senior management wanted employees to do REAL cross-selling to make money, but the metrics were set so high that employees turned to fake accounts to meet the standard. The fake accounts did not benefit the bank in any substantial way: So that's about 2.1 million fake deposit and credit-card accounts, of…

Matt Levine just shows that Wells Fargo wanted a paper trail showing that they told employees not to do this. The interesting question is, what happened when whistleblowers told them it was happening anyway? Apparently, the answer is that they fired the whistleblowers. That says everything about what Wells Fargo really wanted, as opposed to what they said to cover their asses. Remember, he's an industry insider with a bias.

Re: Backpage Raided, CEO Arrested on Sex-Trafficking Charges

#116

Post by rdl » Fri, Oct 07, 2016, 9:11 AM UTC

I wish there were a good way to separate out coerced or human trafficking (which I believe is less common in the medium to high end US prostitution market) from the morally objectionable stuff. Arguably the way to do that is by providing a "clean" alternative, either "good"/safe/consensual prostitution, or just really high quality vr/robotic/immersive porn. It's really hard for me to find fault with someone deciding to have sex with other adults for $200-500+/hr vs. working in a slaughterhouse or call center or something for $8-15/hr.

Re: Backpage Raided, CEO Arrested on Sex-Trafficking Charges

#117

Post by brbsix » Fri, Oct 07, 2016, 9:18 AM UTC

TAForObvReasons wrote: post #80

shubhamjain wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it somewhat boils down to intention. In the case of Wells Fargo, opening fraudulent accounts couldn't have accrued any benefit for the bank. It seems more likely that it would have increased overall cost for the company. Yes, the fraud is attributable to stressing too much on reaching an upselling goal, but it's hard to imagine it's a thing that CEO would have wanted. Should we start punishing people for mana…

> opening fraudulent accounts couldn't have accrued any benefit for the bank Actually, in the hearing Senator Warren tried to connect the fraudulent accounts to the stock price, which would have been a direct benefit for the bank: > You squeezed your employees to the breaking point so they would cheat customers and you could drive up the value of your stock and put hundreds of millions of dollars in your own pocket.…

That was my first thought, even before I heard what Warren had to say. IIRC, Lending Tree was doing something similar. People associated with the company were opening accounts with which to borrow or lend money in order to juice the books and report increased earnings.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2016-08-18/how-lendin...

Re: Backpage Raided, CEO Arrested on Sex-Trafficking Charges

#118

Post by makomk » Fri, Oct 07, 2016, 9:22 AM UTC

empthought wrote: post #84

imtringued wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The sex workers don't care about your morals. They have different morals than you and care about different things. Stop telling them and other people what morals they should have. Regulated prostitution may be bad in your eyes but unregulated prostitution is even worse for those who are already in this industry. Don't let perfect be the enemy of good.

We have a perfectly good approach already; it's called the Nordic model. Arrest johns, not prostitutes. And there are thousands of former sex workers that will give you an earful about what you think you know about prostitution and what prostitutes think.

Ah, the Nordic model... That's the one where they criminalized landlords who knowingly rented to sex workers, then used that law to kick sex workers out of their homes for reporting their rapes to the police, right? The best part is that when Amnesty International took a stance against this, the sleazy slimeballs in the anti-trafficking movement accused them of making it up because those countries didn't criminalize sex workers (which technically they didn't - just everyone around them).

Re: Backpage Raided, CEO Arrested on Sex-Trafficking Charges

#119

Post by makomk » Fri, Oct 07, 2016, 9:30 AM UTC

themgt wrote: post #9

AndrewKemendo wrote: post #3

Is the distinction between this page and the kind of things posted on craigslist, strictly that the posters had to pay to list their ads? Or do prostitutes not post on craigslist? AFAIK Newmark hasn't had to deal with any of this. I'd be interested to know if there is something similar and legal in countries that allow prostitution (Netherlands?). Seems like they were making a lot of revenue for what is basically ill…

I posted a new thread w/ the NYT link [1], [2] because it had this helpful tidbit: A congressional investigation this year found that the website changed some of its adult classifieds to conceal the fact that the advertisements were for sex acts with minors. Mr. Ferrer was subpoenaed by a Senate subcommittee last fall to answer questions about reported child sex-trafficking ads, but he did not show up. Found to be co…

The website changed some of its adult clasifieds to conceal the fact that they were for sex acts with minors, or the people posting them changed them? Because one of these seems an awful lot more likely than the other, and I don't see how Congress could honestly have determined that the site itself did it. I suspect that someone's arguing that banning adverts for child sex is in fact concealing them because people work around the bans, but it's hard to find any information on the actual basis of this claim.

Of note, it also seems that Backpage did report suspected child sex trafficking to the NCMEC, based on a statement by the NCMEC to Congress in 2015.[1] This appears to have been one of the things used against them, with the congressional reports mentioning the large proportion of reports that involved Backpage as proof that they were a child sex trafficking ring while omitting that they were the ones doing the reporting.

[1] http://www.hsgac.senate.gov/download/?id=B087F957-02BD-4F58-...

Re: Backpage Raided, CEO Arrested on Sex-Trafficking Charges

#120

Post by vertex-four » Fri, Oct 07, 2016, 9:46 AM UTC

empthought wrote: post #84

imtringued wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The sex workers don't care about your morals. They have different morals than you and care about different things. Stop telling them and other people what morals they should have. Regulated prostitution may be bad in your eyes but unregulated prostitution is even worse for those who are already in this industry. Don't let perfect be the enemy of good.

We have a perfectly good approach already; it's called the Nordic model. Arrest johns, not prostitutes. And there are thousands of former sex workers that will give you an earful about what you think you know about prostitution and what prostitutes think.

I know several sex workers personally, and regularly sit on the sidelines of their discussions when they talk about their work in sex-positive spaces. I can assure you that all of them would prefer that it were a lot easier to perform their job without fear of the police, or of losing their home, or of the stigma from friends and family.

They also have a tendency to wish that people who didn't want to be in their line of work didn't have to be in their line of work. So why not actually try to solve that problem - reach out to individuals, listen to them, and help them achieve their goals - instead of trying to tell people what they want and don't want? The only reason I can think of is that that doesn't allow you to force your morality on people.