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Craigslist takes personals sections offline in response to FOSTA

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Re: Craigslist takes personals sections offline in response to FOSTA

#211

Post by syshum »

SeeDave wrote: post #117
DannyBee wrote: post #44

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…

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

Step 1. End Prohibition of Sex Work

Step 2. Stop Diverting Police Resources to enforcing laws on what consenting Adults do on their own time (both Prostitution and Drugs)

Step 3. Stop Criminalizing Speech driving to further and further under ground were it is no longer tracable at all

The "scorched earth" groups are in no way protecting victims, in fact they are making it WORSE by driving people to more shady platforms deep deep under ground, where law enforcement will be less likely to find information or victims.

Re: Craigslist takes personals sections offline in response to FOSTA

#212

Post by walterbell »

cookiecaper wrote: post #176
pishpash wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The internet is not "the internet" any more. It's a corporate owned, tapped and monitored, centralized data warehouse. Another decentralized network needs to be formed separately adhering to the original ideals of the internet. In fact this turnover may need to happen periodically. Jump ship from the current so-called internet.

I spent a couple of months working on drafts and unreleased prototypes of decentralized P2P networks, but eventually, it comes full circle. The internet already functions well enough for purposes of decentralization. Sure, there are some clear improvements and some less clear trade-offs that could be made, but the brass tacks is that these are social issues, not technical ones. They have to be addressed at the social…

Some people became "rich and powerful" because of the relatively-free internet of the 90s and 00s. Why aren't they objecting?

Re: Craigslist takes personals sections offline in response to FOSTA

#213

Post by smadge »

narrator wrote: post #77
remailer404 wrote: post #18

Wow! I met my wife just over 7 years ago there, and our 2nd kid is due in a few months. Hard to believe that the personals section is gone.

Since I'm a relatively old guy, I'll tell you how it used to work. Before cell phones, online dating and apps, the way people met people was through friends, or at work, or god forbid, randomly approaching a stranger and introducing oneself, usually at a nightclub or bar, but sometimes at a supermarket or cafe. Rejection happened in one's face publicly in front of other people!

Someone just shared their heartwarming tale about how they met their spouse using craigslist personals and you have the audacity to tell them that their story is illegitimate because "back in my day" people met differently? Have some heart and recognize that their story of how they met is legitimate, cherished, and deserves protection.

Re: Craigslist takes personals sections offline in response to FOSTA

#214

Post by Broken_Hippo »

flukus wrote: post #174
sersi wrote: 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 I agree, but It's not a complete solution. Where I live brothels are legal, there is one 5 minutes from my house yet there are still street workers. The street workers are generally suffering from homelessness, mental health issues, drugs or all three. Legal brothels take care of much of the demand side, but they don't do much for p…

1. Most folks don't think it is a complete solution, and perhaps simply not limiting prostitution to brothels is one of the expansions that would work. You can still outlaw selling from the streets and require folks be registered and working through personals and whatnot, with some safety plans in place.

2. It seems the solution for these particular folks would be to focus less on picking them up for prostitution and instead, finding them safe housing, repeatedly offering mental health care, and repeatedly offering addiction services or at least helping them find a way to avoid feeling like they are forced into prostitution. With prostitution itself being legal, it is much easier to focus on these sorts of technicalities.

Re: Craigslist takes personals sections offline in response to FOSTA

#215

Post by syshum »

golergka wrote: post #206
tajen wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the key aspects of prostitution is it provides an alternative outcome to marriage. Why else would a man step into marriage where 100% rules have been thoughtfully designed against him (except love, for as long as it lasts), if he could last a few years longer by using prostitution... Heck, even sex dolls are being forbidden, even though they cause absolutely no harm to humans (a sex doll house is being closed…

You know that you can have consensual sexual relationships outside of marriage, right? They don't even have to be exclusive. Seriously, dude, if you're a "hungry man", open Tinder or just go to a local hook up bar. Hooking up for a one night stand is trivial.

.

Re: Craigslist takes personals sections offline in response to FOSTA

#216

Post by dangerlibrary »

safety1st wrote: post #210
SeeDave wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The "scorched earth" approach only gets support when the nature and scope of the issues are distorted. What are the real issues in play? One is prostitution, a form of sex work which is illegal in most of the United States. The American public have varying feelings about its legal status, how enforcement should be carried out, etc. Public opinion doesn't support measures which endanger sex workers (which FOSTA does),…

> How much of it goes on in America? Can we get some real data injected into this discussion about the nature and the extent of actual forced sex labor? Scorched earth tactics might be appropriate if America has developed a serious slavery problem (again), but they need to be justified with facts.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_trafficking_in_the_United_...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_trafficking_in_the_Unite...

Re: Craigslist takes personals sections offline in response to FOSTA

#217

Post by tajen »

Buge wrote: post #163
valuearb wrote: post #75

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.

Intent and actual outcome are completely different things until you manage a country. Then you gotta be 1000% goddam sure you’re coercing others for the good reasons, and your responsibility can’t be levied for an “Oops I did it again”.

Re: Craigslist takes personals sections offline in response to FOSTA

#218

Post by gkya »

halflings wrote: post #135
sersi wrote: 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…

A contradicting practical example is the situation with legal brothels in Turkey. The goverment wants them shut but the women working there wants them kept open, because otherwise they have no option but to go underground, and then they lose access to facilities like security and routine health controls. When some years ago the Istanbul municipality tried to shut them off the women protested: http://www.milliyet.com.tr/karakoy-de-genelevde-calisan-kadi...

Re: Craigslist takes personals sections offline in response to FOSTA

#219

Post by syshum »

wwweston wrote: post #185
DannyBee wrote: post #44

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…

>>But it is obvious to anyone who has used them that CL personals were utterly overwhelmed by people who are selling the other kind of Saas (Sex as a Service).

That is also largely the government fault because back in 2010 they more or less forced CL to close the Sections of the site that was dedicated to Adult Services... and as predicted the people that were in those sections simply moved to the personals

Re: Craigslist takes personals sections offline in response to FOSTA

#220

Post by Buge »

disiplus wrote: post #199
Buge wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Neither I nor rpearl claimed it wasn't limiting.

The intent was to protect people who are being harmed against their will (held in sex slavery against their will).

Of course the actual effect of the law is different than the intent. The actual effect is limiting.

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