Fifty Women Say Salesforce Helped Sex Traffickers Exploit Them • Hacker News Board

Re: Fifty Women Say Salesforce Helped Sex Traffickers Exploit Them

#31

Post by tarsinge » Wed, Mar 27, 2019, 2:58 PM UTC

Kaveren wrote: post #10

erik_landerholm wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Benioff seems like a tool. He puts his name on children’s hospitals...it is possible to donate without people knowing, Keanu does it all the time. If you don’t hate Salesforce, you haven’t been paying attention. I’ve wanted forever to rid our company of anything to do with Salesforce, but I work with some people that can’t handle change. This law suit seems like a money grab. Go after the deepest pockets, but I perso…

You are complaining about someone donating to a children's hospital and being credited for it?

Not talking about Benioff but yes I can complain. If you are very wealthy you have to contribute back to society, that's not a thing to admire but to require. And if you donate only a small percent of your wealth, say 1%, I don't think you deserve more credit than anybody having a net worth of $10k donating $100, in fact maybe less, even if the absolute amount is way more.

Re: Fifty Women Say Salesforce Helped Sex Traffickers Exploit Them

#32

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Mar 27, 2019, 2:59 PM UTC

mistersquid wrote: post #24

zwkrt wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is Apex still a thing? When I was at my first internship that environment was one of the only things that has ever made me consider quitting programming.

Can you provide more details about "Apex"? Is this a staffing agency or a company? I'm also curious about what happened during your internship that made you consider a different career, if you don't mind and are able to share.

[deleted]

Re: Fifty Women Say Salesforce Helped Sex Traffickers Exploit Them

#33

Post by leroy_masochist » Wed, Mar 27, 2019, 3:00 PM UTC

hajile wrote: post #22

Should we also allow Microsoft to be sued for all the criminals that use windows? Salesforce is a platform (albeit a horrible one I never want to work with again) and provides services to whoever pays. Illegal actions are between the local government and the user. Criminals lie. They could claim to be a humanitarian company while trafficking. The only way for Salesforce to know would be to manually investigate all th…

> Should we also allow Microsoft to be sued for all the criminals that use windows?

No, but what is hinted at in the complaint is that Salesforce did some kind of custom integration for Backpage:

> The women sued Salesforce Tuesday in San Francisco state court, claiming billionaire Marc Benioff’s company knowingly supported Backpage by providing customized database tools to market and remarket prostitutes to “pimps, johns and traffickers who had been underusing its trafficking services.”

I'm no lawyer but I imagine the crux of this is whether Salesforce actually did meaningfully custom integrations for this. If their team's interaction with Backpage was limited to, "hey I'd like to buy 10 seats" "sure that'll be $#,### per seat per year" I have a hard time understanding where there was true wrongdoing on Salesforce's part, aside from maybe a lack of situational awareness of what Backpage was.

If on the other hand they were actually building features designed to help Backpage keep more pimps on the platform (not sure what that would look like for pimps specifically vs. other Salesforce use cases, but just hypothetically) then yeah that would be really really bad.

It is kind of surprising this is happening....Marc Benioff makes a big show of being woke, and activist-journalists with a big audience such as Nick Kristof at the NYT have been writing about how bad Backpage is (was) since 2012-ish. You would think this one wouldn't get past Compliance.

Re: Fifty Women Say Salesforce Helped Sex Traffickers Exploit Them

#34

Post by alexandercrohde » Wed, Mar 27, 2019, 3:02 PM UTC

hajile wrote: post #22

Should we also allow Microsoft to be sued for all the criminals that use windows? Salesforce is a platform (albeit a horrible one I never want to work with again) and provides services to whoever pays. Illegal actions are between the local government and the user. Criminals lie. They could claim to be a humanitarian company while trafficking. The only way for Salesforce to know would be to manually investigate all th…

Not the best delivery, but I think the question has to be asked. How much use does a tool take for the blame of those who misuse it?

We would all laugh at an article entitled "Criminals used PENCIL AND PAPER in dastardly crime to traffic women" or "telephones" or even "email."

Obviously the other extreme exists, when a tech company knowingly caters to an immoral regime, which is part of why I reject this blurring so emphatically.

Re: Fifty Women Say Salesforce Helped Sex Traffickers Exploit Them

#35

Post by Nasrudith » Wed, Mar 27, 2019, 3:02 PM UTC

pferde wrote: post #3

I wonder whom did Salesforce annoy enough to warrant a media smear campaign against them.

The old media has been going increasingly rabid-luddite in general really as they lose relevance.

Re: Fifty Women Say Salesforce Helped Sex Traffickers Exploit Them

#36

Post by calimac » Wed, Mar 27, 2019, 3:02 PM UTC

knotdeven wrote: post #12

Big data will be used to identify, track, isolate, and then indoctrinate the most vulnerable members of society. You will be shadow banned and gas lit into a pipeline that serves to supply the insidious demands of those who see humans only as resources. We coders will unwittingly(poorly compensated) or wittingly(well compensated) algorithmically functionalize the pimp psychology and business practice into a system of…

Beautiful description of whats happening. Few can see what you describe through their lense of bias and rationalization

Re: Fifty Women Say Salesforce Helped Sex Traffickers Exploit Them

#37

Post by dmos62 » Wed, Mar 27, 2019, 3:03 PM UTC

milemi wrote: post #27

Since it wasn't mentioned in the bloomberg article, whoever has been paying attention knows that shutting down backpage has made sex workers less safe and more dependent on pimps. Prostitution should be completely legal and brought into the light, not pushed into the shadows.

A very good presentation on the topic, by an activist with the Sex Worker Open University: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VJRBx0JjM_M

Even if I had found the content uninteresting, I would have still watched through the whole thing because of how well written I found it.

Re: Fifty Women Say Salesforce Helped Sex Traffickers Exploit Them

#38

Post by wlesieutre » Wed, Mar 27, 2019, 3:06 PM UTC

alexandercrohde wrote: post #34

hajile wrote: post #22

Should we also allow Microsoft to be sued for all the criminals that use windows? Salesforce is a platform (albeit a horrible one I never want to work with again) and provides services to whoever pays. Illegal actions are between the local government and the user. Criminals lie. They could claim to be a humanitarian company while trafficking. The only way for Salesforce to know would be to manually investigate all th…

Not the best delivery, but I think the question has to be asked. How much use does a tool take for the blame of those who misuse it? We would all laugh at an article entitled "Criminals used PENCIL AND PAPER in dastardly crime to traffic women" or "telephones" or even "email." Obviously the other extreme exists, when a tech company knowingly caters to an immoral regime, which is part of why I reject this blurring so…

Pencil and paper is too generic, that’s like “CRIMINALS USED COMPUTERS!” This is a more specific accusation. Not just any pens, criminals used UNI-BALL PENS.

Tools aside, I have mixed feelings on the Backpage shutdown. What I've heard through friends of friends is that for non-trafficked sex workers this was a service that helped them earn a living much more safely than being out on the street looking for clients. Losing it has not been good for them.

One of the side effects of outlawing sex work is that everyone has to operate under the radar - both the people working a job for themselves and the human trafficking rings. If it were a legal profession operating in the open, would we be in a better position to find and help the people who are being forced in to it?

Similar problems to what we've seen with drug prohibition and the cartels.

Re: Fifty Women Say Salesforce Helped Sex Traffickers Exploit Them

#39

Post by sperber2999 » Wed, Mar 27, 2019, 3:07 PM UTC

I am most certain SF had no idea what was going on, and while any form of abuse is horrible it makes no sense accusing SF of helping in a crime where it's impossible for SF to know. It's like blaming a lawn gnome maker for somebody being beaten with a lawn gnome. Demanding SF monitors everything, or Google monintors all mails, to prevent criminal activity is causing more overall harm for society than those edge cases do. If not SF they could have used every other CRM with ease, I suppose, but SF, Google et al turning into the panopticon would harm everybody.

Re: Fifty Women Say Salesforce Helped Sex Traffickers Exploit Them

#40

Post by will_brown » Wed, Mar 27, 2019, 3:07 PM UTC

hajile wrote: post #22

Should we also allow Microsoft to be sued for all the criminals that use windows? Salesforce is a platform (albeit a horrible one I never want to work with again) and provides services to whoever pays. Illegal actions are between the local government and the user. Criminals lie. They could claim to be a humanitarian company while trafficking. The only way for Salesforce to know would be to manually investigate all th…

>Should we also allow Microsoft to be sued for all the criminals that use windows?

If a company provides products/services to someone with the knowledge those products/services will be used for a crime...then yes.

For example it’s legal for an arms dealer to sell a gun, but illegal to sell a gun if the seller knows the gun is being purchased with the intent of being used in a crime.

Here what you have is Salesforce who allegedly sold its products/services to backpage knowing their software would specifically be used to facilitate prostitution and human trafficking. Whereas you - for whatever reasons - seem to be concluding salesforce had no way of knowing their products/services would be used by backpage in the commission of a crime (ie your Windows analogy). However, the facts suggest SalesForce was well aware of backpages business practices and activities (and was publicly fighting against the same criminal activity, while simultaneously supplying software that facilitated the same). It’s a tough case but human slaves and a corporation privately profiting from these activities while publicly “fighting” against the same won’t play well to a jury.