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Craigslist takes personals sections offline in response to FOSTA

craigslist.org

191–200 of 654 posts

Re: Craigslist takes personals sections offline in response to FOSTA

#191

This is not surprising, but sad. Years ago, i was dragged (i was the only engineer in the local office) into a whitehouse (or maybe it was state department, i can't remember) sponsored working group on online sex trafficking. The non-profits dedicated to fighting this, while seemingly well-intentioned, were completely and totally unwilling to see any other perspective or try to find shared ground. It was scorched ear…

> we should be burning down craigslist entirely So, let's all be honest about something about CL personals that means these folks might not be wrong (even if, as is likely, the actual legislation is terrible policy). I've actually used CL personals to get some dates, and there are things I liked about it (primarily text-focused medium can be nice, are there any more of those?), and I'm single, so having it go away is…

just googling `w4m` now brings up a ton of prostitution trash >< I don't even want to know what it stands for.

Re: Craigslist takes personals sections offline in response to FOSTA

#192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sweden has more rapes per capita than any country outside of sub-saharan Africa. Whatever system they have they can keep.

I recall this is Because their definition is far broader - if it was applied to other countries the number of rapes would increase

I think it's to do with the collection of statistics as well.

They record the rape at the initial reporting to the police, no matter what any later investigation shows, and multiple rapes are counted individually (many countries do not).

This is not saying which approach is correct for recording the numbers, but that you cant simply compare the numbers.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-19592372

Re: Craigslist takes personals sections offline in response to FOSTA

#193

I am fucking sick and fucking tired of people interfering with the free choice of individuals in any effort to "fix" society and "help" people. Lawmakers and advocates, have some epistemic humility and acknowledge that your own perspective may be mistaken. Not everything is oppression. Not every activity is injustice. Sometimes, people just fucking disagree.

And I’m sick and tired of governments doing nothing to restrict the freedoms of companies and individuals to screw over people in order to profit. I guess it’s just different viewpoints.

Some would say that state provided healthcare restricts freedom and choice, I would say that not having to worry about paying for healthcare gives a person a huge amount of freedom.

People have different views of what constitutes freedom, and I certainly don’t see it as a universally good thing in every circumstance. I would say countries like the US are very “free”, and countries like those in Scandinavia, Germany perhaps, possibly less so along many lines, and yet the latter have a much higher quality of life, lower poverty, better education, etc.

Re: Craigslist takes personals sections offline in response to FOSTA

#194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> we should be burning down craigslist entirely So, let's all be honest about something about CL personals that means these folks might not be wrong (even if, as is likely, the actual legislation is terrible policy). I've actually used CL personals to get some dates, and there are things I liked about it (primarily text-focused medium can be nice, are there any more of those?), and I'm single, so having it go away is…

just googling `w4m` now brings up a ton of prostitution trash >< I don't even want to know what it stands for.

Then shut down Google too.

Re: Craigslist takes personals sections offline in response to FOSTA

#195
post #147
post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"It has become clear to be that the internet is naturally monopolistic in a way physical institutions are not. One simply cannot move their gun channel, or the cigar trading forum to other sites and have a decent chance of maintaining even 10% of their customers." That's funny - I thought that exactly the opposite was true. The Internet (not particular sites, not AOL or "the facebook", but The Internet) is naturally…

It takes a lot more time, expertise, and money to run a website (even a simple wordpress site) than to upload videos to youtube.

You are right about that. And yet, the alternative seems to be "I want to exercise my constitutional rights, but I want a private company to make it easy, fight for me when legal problems arise, and foot the bill".

Re: Craigslist takes personals sections offline in response to FOSTA

#196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> we should be burning down craigslist entirely So, let's all be honest about something about CL personals that means these folks might not be wrong (even if, as is likely, the actual legislation is terrible policy). I've actually used CL personals to get some dates, and there are things I liked about it (primarily text-focused medium can be nice, are there any more of those?), and I'm single, so having it go away is…

just googling `w4m` now brings up a ton of prostitution trash >< I don't even want to know what it stands for.

Nothing bad, just "woman (looking) for man". I used to see ads in the local free paper with people looking for relationships.

Naturally, m4m, w4w, mw4m etc are also understood.

Re: Craigslist takes personals sections offline in response to FOSTA

#197

This is not surprising, but sad. Years ago, i was dragged (i was the only engineer in the local office) into a whitehouse (or maybe it was state department, i can't remember) sponsored working group on online sex trafficking. The non-profits dedicated to fighting this, while seemingly well-intentioned, were completely and totally unwilling to see any other perspective or try to find shared ground. It was scorched ear…

In defense of the "scorched earth approach or nothing" folks: from my perspective... it's a completely and totally human response to faceless, blameless, unapproachable (from their perspective) perpetrators and facilitators of systematic abuse and exploitation of innocent and vulnerable people. If you've ever felt frustrated at an IVR system for routine tasks such as banking, restaurant reservations, canceling a gym…

> That said, I really wish that I could come forward with a solution to the online sex trafficking problem.

Start by legalizing prostitution and removing the black market. That won't end all trafficking, but will end a lot and will make it much easier to go after the remaining illegal black market as it's now been separated from the legal market. Comment about how people who don't learn are doomed to repeat history here. How many black markets for harmless everyday goods and services do we need to ban before the idiots in charge start to understand these simple principles? They're constantly talking about markets, but clearly no one in government understands the first thing about them. Or, more likely, doesn't want to.

Re: Craigslist takes personals sections offline in response to FOSTA

#198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sweden has more rapes per capita than any country outside of sub-saharan Africa. Whatever system they have they can keep.

It seems some of the men living in Sweden are among the planets worst sexual predators, to word it carefully. Sweden is pushing new legislation that will increase the number of rapes even more. It will be a law of consent and will shift the burden of proof from the victim to the rapist. Unless the rapist can prove consent, he will be sentenced for rape by negligence. Under the new law, having sex with a traffic victi…

How will this work? If neither party can prove consent, they both rapped each other by negligence? Or does this only apply to Johns?

Re: Craigslist takes personals sections offline in response to FOSTA

#199
post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s completely limiting free choice and voluntary interactions between consenting adults. A huge personals section just got shut down. Unless you think 100% of personal ads are coerced sex trafficking, which would be rather crazy opinion. If you truly wanted to curb sex trafficking, you’d legalize prostitution, not drive it farther underground.

rpearl never claimed that it wasn't limiting free choice. rpearl claimed the intention wasn't to limit free choice. Intent and actual outcome are two completely different things.

it's still limiting if you define it to broadly. if i defined a law that said every owner of a home will be punished if somebody in that home smoked weed or did drugs.

and airbnb is gone, and so on.

Re: Craigslist takes personals sections offline in response to FOSTA

#200
post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is key. I strongly believe that legalization is the only answer to the problem. Driving things underground is only going to cause more issues and abuse to the sex workers. It's kind of ironic when in France, for example, a law gets passed criminalizing the customers while the sex workers go in the street to protest that law saying that it will create more abuse (and one year after, they were right). Trying to st…

> This is key. I strongly believe that legalization is the only answer to the problem. Why do we have to "believe"? There are many examples to learn from, to see what works and what doesn't. For example, this study [0]. "This paper suggests it’s the latter. Using trafficking data from 150 countries, the authors find that "countries where prostitution is legal experience a larger reported incidence of human traffickin…

FWIW there's been another reform in Germany. Brothels and prostitution are legal, provided prostitutes register with the police. The police registration is a bit of paperwork and an interview every 6/12 months, the goal of the interview is to uncover trafficking.

Skipping that interview is a crime for the brothel owner, not just the prostitute.

Two weeks after the reform, about 90% of prostitutes in Munich had been interviewed (mostly before it was formally required): http://www.sueddeutsche.de/muenchen/prostitutionsschutzgeset...

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