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Craigslist takes personals sections offline in response to FOSTA

craigslist.org

561–570 of 654 posts

Re: Craigslist takes personals sections offline in response to FOSTA

#561
post #361

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>It's not like sex work is even legal in the majority of western nations It should be legal that is the point >Its their fault they forced craigslist to shut down a section openly advertising illegal content? yes, that was the entire point of Section 230 of the communications act, to prevent platform from being liable for users content, even if the users were doing things that were illegal Further it is a violation,…

> yes, that was the entire point of Section 230 of the communications act, to prevent platform from being liable for users content, even if the users were doing things that were illegal There was the assumption in this is that illegal content was removed. There's also a difference in CL actively putting a section in that says "Illegal Services advertised here". For clarity, there's no concern with legalizing these se…

>>You think it's a violation of your First Amendment rights to be unable to openly advertise criminal activities?

I dont know... lets see

Congress shall make no law ... abridging the freedom of speech,

Yep seems pretty clear to me, that congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech.... So what part of that is unclear to you?

>>Where does that line end?

No where? Freedom of speech is absolute. It you have a limit on speech is stops being free speech, and become regulated speech

Re: Craigslist takes personals sections offline in response to FOSTA

#562
post #561

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> yes, that was the entire point of Section 230 of the communications act, to prevent platform from being liable for users content, even if the users were doing things that were illegal There was the assumption in this is that illegal content was removed. There's also a difference in CL actively putting a section in that says "Illegal Services advertised here". For clarity, there's no concern with legalizing these se…

>>You think it's a violation of your First Amendment rights to be unable to openly advertise criminal activities? I dont know... lets see Congress shall make no law ... abridging the freedom of speech, Yep seems pretty clear to me, that congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech.... So what part of that is unclear to you? >>Where does that line end? No where? Freedom of speech is absolute. It you have…

The Supreme Court (and other US courts) have repeatedly found that the US Constitution does not hold that freedom of speech is absolute.

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

Re: Craigslist takes personals sections offline in response to FOSTA

#563
post #241
post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>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…

Some workers of the business in the Netherlands argue that the end of prohibition worsened conditions.

I would be very interested to see some studies on Europe’s experiments with vice decriminalization. Prostitution in the Netherlands and Drugs in Portugal seem to be the main ones.

Link?

Re: Craigslist takes personals sections offline in response to FOSTA

#564
post #311
post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I assume things got worse because cowardly assholes are now allowed to treat the prostitutes disrespectfully. Before, the assholes that were afraid of the law wouldn't risk going to a prostitute. Now that the law won't hurt them, they go and are demanding disrespectful assholes. Just a guess. Edit: law abiding != kind, respectful, or moral

It got worse because no one wants to be a prostitute, and there has always been a strong coercive element to women entering that profession. When you legalize, you increase demand while the supply is still capped, so coercion rises to compensate.

Where does the coercion appear? Shouldn’t wages just go up?

Re: Craigslist takes personals sections offline in response to FOSTA

#566

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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, o…

It's even worse than that: politicians created over-reaching laws and enforcement, to demographically target political opponents and take away their right to vote.

> "The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people. You understand what I'm saying? We knew we couldn't make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did." – John Ehrlichman, to Dan Baum for Harper's Magazine in 1994, about President Richard Nixon's war on drugs, declared in 1971.

Meta source: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_on_drugs#20th_century

Re: Craigslist takes personals sections offline in response to FOSTA

#567
post #555

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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, o…

I think the upperclass mostly "controls" lawmaking decisions for their own interest, and are almost entirely unaware of the condition/state of mind/customs of the lower classes. They don't understand how it works, and because they don't understand they feel superior, so they make decisions on behalf of the lower classes with the intent of nobly showing the masses the way while serving their own interests. There's als…

There's an interesting theory, which I can't recall the name of, that says that poor people understand the rich because they can empathize with them, but it takes too much energy for the rich to empathize with the poor because there are so many of them and their burden is overwhelming. So the rich don't understand the poor but the poor understand the rich, which explains why we have the laws we have.

Re: Craigslist takes personals sections offline in response to FOSTA

#568
post #429

Earlier quoted context omitted.

...and raining diamonds on Saturn and Jupiter. Surely there is a frothy Series A to be had here somewhere.

Forget hydrocarbons and diamonds, the Helium-3 mining is the next candidate for the hype curve.

I thought we're already past He-3 hype?

Re: Craigslist takes personals sections offline in response to FOSTA

#569
post #555

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the upperclass mostly "controls" lawmaking decisions for their own interest, and are almost entirely unaware of the condition/state of mind/customs of the lower classes. They don't understand how it works, and because they don't understand they feel superior, so they make decisions on behalf of the lower classes with the intent of nobly showing the masses the way while serving their own interests. There's als…

There's an interesting theory, which I can't recall the name of, that says that poor people understand the rich because they can empathize with them, but it takes too much energy for the rich to empathize with the poor because there are so many of them and their burden is overwhelming. So the rich don't understand the poor but the poor understand the rich, which explains why we have the laws we have.

It would be interesting if you could explain this a little better, or find the source. Sounds a little vague but I'd like to know more.

Re: Craigslist takes personals sections offline in response to FOSTA

#570
post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sure that places with legalized drugs also experience increases in drug trafficking inflows. And the overall alcohol consumption in the USA rose after the prohibition. >> Does this mean legalizing prostitution is a bad idea? Well, not necessarily. The authors note that legalization could have other positive effects, such making it easier for prostitutes to seek legal or medical help and decreasing rates of abuse…

Yes it's a bad idea. Imagine we had legalized drugs, but barely anyone wanted to make them, because making them was nasty and degrading in a way that few people could even tolerate. No matter what you did, you simply couldn't find enough people willing to make them. Paying them more wont help, because beyond a certain point the nastiness of making them can't be washed away with money. So the next step is coercing peo…

Except they could do that now (its called rape / sex slave trafficking) and the women would know it was safe to contact the police.

Part of the power of abusing people is taking away people's paperwork and convincing them the police won't help them.

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