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Craigslist takes personals sections offline in response to FOSTA

craigslist.org

391–400 of 654 posts

Re: Craigslist takes personals sections offline in response to FOSTA

#391

I'd encourage folks here to check out ZeroNet ( https://zeronet.io ). It's a cool little project I've been following for the past couple years that's attempting to decentralize the Internet. It's not very popular but surprisingly it has 11.5k stars on GitHub ( https://github.com/HelloZeroNet/ZeroNet ).

Can I use your service to promote or facilitate the prostitution of another person? Asking for a friend.

zeronet isn't really that anonymous, you're looking for tor or i2p

Re: Craigslist takes personals sections offline in response to FOSTA

#393

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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_Un…

Thanks for the links! These Wikipedia articles demonstrate my point that the facts and data are very weak in the trafficking discussion, and that data is often misrepresented to exaggerate the size of the problem. - The sex trafficking article states that in 2001 the State Department estimated 50k-100k were trafficked into the US -- this estimate was for both genders but the article erroneously states it is women onl…

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Re: Craigslist takes personals sections offline in response to FOSTA

#394

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Great, like the trade is going to suddenly end. All they've achieved is 'out of sight, out of mind.' I'm quite annoyed about this, both because it affects numerous friends of mine who are sex workers and are now scrambling to find alternatives to working on the street, where they're far less safe, and on a more pedestrian level because I met my wife on a Craigslist date years ago. Life is too short to make excuses fo…

I've been thinking about this a lot this morning. I think almost every vice would be less damaging to society if it was in the open. Polite society doesn't want to see sex work or drugs, but they still exist. Hiding them makes things much worse for the people directly involved. It's trafficked kids with broken immigration status who are more scared of the cops than their captors. It's drug addicts who OD on tainted d…

I've been thinking about this peripherally for a while, especially the bigger picture when some law is passed, and it seems exceptionally out of touch with the reality, and does more harm than good.

A depressing thought: What if we apply something akin to Occam's Razor? What if the lawmakers want to hurt the people struggling at at the lower rungs of society? To me it feels unlikely it is intentional in most cases, or conscious, but what if on some level, there is a motivation to hurt these people who they feel are inferior? You can easily apply Hanlon's razor here as a counter-argument, but that's not what I'm saying. I'm not attributing malice to any individual actor, but to something more subtle, e.g. unconscious bias.

Maybe subconsciously, there's a force that's trying to destroy people who are for whatever reason unable thrive in society? I guess maybe this force IS society?

Apologies if this is a bit vague and short. I just wanted to share this thought in case it resonated with anyone else. I'll be happy to expand upon this thought if there's interest.

Re: Craigslist takes personals sections offline in response to FOSTA

#395

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are operating under the premise here that what youtube/reddit have banned is something illegal and immoral. Reddit literally banned forums for posting good deals they found for firearms and accessories online. And youtube is banning channels that feature people enjoying their completely legal hobby enjoyed by hundreds of millions of people. No, the problem here is that governments and large institutions are using…

Human trafficking is about the least innocuous thing I can imagine.

Scare tactics to convince citizens to willingly give up their rights is even less innocuous.

Re: Craigslist takes personals sections offline in response to FOSTA

#397
post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s not misguided, it’s deliberate. Broad restrictions on prostitution and adult services were wanted by conservatives based on family values, liberals are favoring regulations on speech due to identity politics. I’m sure both groups honestly want to help the trafficked, and they came together to both get what they want, and pat themselves on the back at the same time.

> Broad restrictions on prostitution and adult services were wanted by conservatives I severely doubt that conservatives want anything of the sort. What they do want is for internet companies to take responsibility for keeping kids off their sites which is not that big of an ask if they would just stop their whining and do it.

Isn't this specifically tailored to address human trafficking concerns? What makes you think this has something to do with kids on the internet? I always had the impression that exploiters are rarely kids.

> which is not that big of an ask

Giving false credentials during signups is a more common practice than what is believed, especially for digital natives. How can you truly ascertain the age of users without mass surveillance practices?

Re: Craigslist takes personals sections offline in response to FOSTA

#398
post #207

Tonight tens of thousands sex workers are devestated that their safer tool for finding clients is shutting down. Exploitative sex trafficking will continue unabated, but independent working people will be forced into more dangerous situations.

> independent working people Good. Sorry, but if you are not being exploited through human trafficking then you are exploiting and taking advantage of your clients deepest emotions of loneliness and love for profit. Anyone close to that industry will tell you that the majority of your money is made off "whales" just like in Mobile gaming. Whales that fall in love and spend 5 figures and up a year on one person. Not s…

Hilarious to read a comment equating sex work with mobile game design. And then being ok with oppressive rules against the former. On a tech site full of people working in the latter.

Re: Craigslist takes personals sections offline in response to FOSTA

#399

The irony though is that the personal section will most likely just migrate to another section of the website.

And then potentially cause the entire website to fold when they are charged with sex trafficking in random places.

Re: Craigslist takes personals sections offline in response to FOSTA

#400
I think that there are three kinds of people that would support this bill:

A) sincere people for whom 1 victim is too many and any tactic is worth reducing the victim count by any amount

B) people too afraid to be labeled as pro sex trafficking

C) people who want weapons to silence speech and are using A and B

I don’t know how you would go about determining the mix, but I am sure the C group will show their hand soon enough when we see calls for shutting down platforms that were used to support political rivals, after they fail to police user content on their site.

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