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Fifty Women Say Salesforce Helped Sex Traffickers Exploit Them

bloomberg.com

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Re: Fifty Women Say Salesforce Helped Sex Traffickers Exploit Them

#61

Post by will_brown »

hajile wrote: post #58
will_brown wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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 w…

A bunch of Salesforce devs are hired to work on a human trafficking site. Do they all shrug and keep working? Or does Salesforce perhaps keep a special team of devs who are happy to participate in illegal actions? I doubt the conspiracy angle here and think someone would have talked. Either the site as coded didn't have any apparent links to trafficking or Salesforce didn't participate beyond some unknowing consultat…

Well that’s part of the discovery process of litigation, find out who knew what and when they knew it.

I think it’s hard to bury your head in the sand if you are salesforce and say you had no idea of backpage’s business activities and/or how your products/services would help those specific business activities...especially where the companies public facing side engages in an anti-human trafficking/prostitution PR campaign.

Re: Fifty Women Say Salesforce Helped Sex Traffickers Exploit Them

#62

Post by 0815test »

DoreenMichele wrote: post #53
leroy_masochist wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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,…

If on the other hand they were actually building features designed to keep more pimps on the platform (not sure what that would look like for pimps specifically vs. other Salesforce use cases, but just hypothetically) Yeah, I have mixed feelings about this article. I've read a number of things that suggest that Backpage was better for women, allowing them to market themselves, protect their safety, etc. I'm for the d…

> She makes the point that legalization usually means regulation and it winds up being just as bad as or worse than being pimped. ...

I'm pretty sure that "keep people who are in duress from entering this particular line of business" would be part of any meaningful regulation of sex work. If there's no feasible regulation that can achieve this (something I'm not sure about one way or the other) then we should avoid de-regulation and just keep the status quo. I agree that the broader issue of "what to do about people who are shut out of the labor market or stuck in dead-end, low-paying jobs" is quite relevant. UBI might be an important piece of the puzzle.

Re: Fifty Women Say Salesforce Helped Sex Traffickers Exploit Them

#63

Post by belorn »

will_brown wrote: post #57
asdffdsa wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"the facts suggest SalesForce was well aware of backpages business practices and activities" source?

The article we are commenting on... >“Salesforce knew the scourge of sex trafficking because it sought publicity for trying to stop it," according to the complaint. Allegedly salesforce had a PR campaign against human trafficking and prostitution and knew backpage was in the business of facilitating the same when it elected to do business with backpage and that their software would specifically be used to facilitate…

Can we get some dates on those facts?

Too many time I have seen evidence like this, only to later see that the dates changes the context.

Did Salesforce have a PR campaign against human trafficking and prostitution before or after Backpage got seized by U.S. authorities in April 2018? Before or after Backpage became a customer? Before or after the adult section? Before or after it was generally known to include sex trafficking (which given a glance on the wikipedia article is sometimes around 2012-ish?

The other question is why did it take U.S. authorities until April 2018, 14 years after backpage was launched and 6 years after it was generally known? Were they incompetent, a lack of resources, or what? Did saleforce has knowledge that the police did not, and if so when, and why was it not given over to the police? How long time was the investigation and was salveforce involved? Was it a legal grey zone and as such the opinion of lawyers was involved, which we don't know the context or dates of? Did Saleforce get advice from the prosecutor/police?

This case is interesting but to me almost all the important details are currently not public.

Re: Fifty Women Say Salesforce Helped Sex Traffickers Exploit Them

#64

Post by [deleted] »

0815test wrote: post #62
DoreenMichele wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If on the other hand they were actually building features designed to keep more pimps on the platform (not sure what that would look like for pimps specifically vs. other Salesforce use cases, but just hypothetically) Yeah, I have mixed feelings about this article. I've read a number of things that suggest that Backpage was better for women, allowing them to market themselves, protect their safety, etc. I'm for the d…

> She makes the point that legalization usually means regulation and it winds up being just as bad as or worse than being pimped. ... I'm pretty sure that "keep people who are in duress from entering this particular line of business" would be part of any meaningful regulation of sex work. If there's no feasible regulation that can achieve this (something I'm not sure about one way or the other) then we should avoid d…

[deleted]

Re: Fifty Women Say Salesforce Helped Sex Traffickers Exploit Them

#65

Post by uhhhhhhh »

will_brown wrote: post #57
asdffdsa wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"the facts suggest SalesForce was well aware of backpages business practices and activities" source?

The article we are commenting on... >“Salesforce knew the scourge of sex trafficking because it sought publicity for trying to stop it," according to the complaint. Allegedly salesforce had a PR campaign against human trafficking and prostitution and knew backpage was in the business of facilitating the same when it elected to do business with backpage and that their software would specifically be used to facilitate…

It assumes/alleges salesforce knew that Backpage was in human trafficking and they knew backpage was their customer at the same time, neither of which they prove or even attempt to prove.

Gonna wait on the courts for this one, so far its all too much implied and nothing for actual facts.

Re: Fifty Women Say Salesforce Helped Sex Traffickers Exploit Them

#66

Post by olivermarks »

Craigslist would have been shut down if they hadn't closed down their 'lonely hearts' section. Backpage was essentially a craigslist clone right down to look and feel and allowed prostitution advertising, which was the main substance and content of that site until they were closed down.

This is another difficult free speech and enabling platform 'responsibility' area which is easily exploitable by both criminals (human traffickers etc) and exploiters of the law's grey areas (Those suing SalesForce). Like the Michael Jackson accusers there is a danger that widely circulated accusations presented as fact by the corporate media will greatly damage SalesForce's credibility. huge sums of money as compensation/hush money are at stake and there is much to gain and little to risk for accusers in the current climate.

Re: Fifty Women Say Salesforce Helped Sex Traffickers Exploit Them

#67

Post by dyeje »

Pharmakon wrote: post #56
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.

The issue of sex work seems only tangentially related to human trafficking. Prostitution should be legal (and regulated), but human trafficking really shouldn’t be.

~80% of human trafficking victims are sexually exploited [1]. So that seems alot more than tangential. I don't think anyone is arguing that human trafficking should be legal.

[1] https://www.unodc.org/unodc/en/human-trafficking/global-repo...

Re: Fifty Women Say Salesforce Helped Sex Traffickers Exploit Them

#68

Post by will_brown »

uhhhhhhh wrote: post #65
will_brown wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article we are commenting on... >“Salesforce knew the scourge of sex trafficking because it sought publicity for trying to stop it," according to the complaint. Allegedly salesforce had a PR campaign against human trafficking and prostitution and knew backpage was in the business of facilitating the same when it elected to do business with backpage and that their software would specifically be used to facilitate…

It assumes/alleges salesforce knew that Backpage was in human trafficking and they knew backpage was their customer at the same time, neither of which they prove or even attempt to prove. Gonna wait on the courts for this one, so far its all too much implied and nothing for actual facts.

>It assumes/alleges salesforce knew that Backpage was in human trafficking and they knew backpage was their customer at the same time, neither of which they prove or even attempt to prove.

They haven’t “even attempted to prove their claims?” Have you read the plaintiffs Complaint? What do you think they brought the lawsuit for if not to prove their claims?

Re: Fifty Women Say Salesforce Helped Sex Traffickers Exploit Them

#69

Post by zwkrt »

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.

As I recall (this was almost 10 years ago now), Salesforce had tools to allow you to make your own websites and custom integrstions based on Salesforce data, but you had to use this web-IDE for Apex. Apex is like someone saw PHP and JSP and decided that the best thing to do would be to combine the worst elements of both. Both the markup and iterative code components were non-standard (at least with PHP you embed code into actual HTML), and the development process and environment were not documented to any useful degree, since almost no one used it. I vaguely recall that a major version change happened during my internship as well.

Re: Fifty Women Say Salesforce Helped Sex Traffickers Exploit Them

#70

Post by tguedes »

belorn wrote: post #63
will_brown wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article we are commenting on... >“Salesforce knew the scourge of sex trafficking because it sought publicity for trying to stop it," according to the complaint. Allegedly salesforce had a PR campaign against human trafficking and prostitution and knew backpage was in the business of facilitating the same when it elected to do business with backpage and that their software would specifically be used to facilitate…

Can we get some dates on those facts? Too many time I have seen evidence like this, only to later see that the dates changes the context. Did Salesforce have a PR campaign against human trafficking and prostitution before or after Backpage got seized by U.S. authorities in April 2018? Before or after Backpage became a customer? Before or after the adult section? Before or after it was generally known to include sex t…

Can you just read the article? Almost all your questions are answered or linked to in the article.
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