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Fifty Women Say Salesforce Helped Sex Traffickers Exploit Them

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Re: Fifty Women Say Salesforce Helped Sex Traffickers Exploit Them

#101

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,…

SalesForce not like Office 2016 where you install and use it. It's like Oracle EBS in that the forms, workflow, processes and etc needs to be customized for your business and use case. SalesForce has consultants and service people that help you with this. They are probably suing because SalesForce consultants or professional services help with the SalesForce setup/integration at BackPage.

There are lots and lots of consultants who implement Salesforce instances who work for themselves. Many do have certifications from Salesforce, but that doesn't make Salesforce accountable for their actions.

Re: Fifty Women Say Salesforce Helped Sex Traffickers Exploit Them

#102
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…

It deserves an investigation at least to decide if it's worth exploring further and how complicit the company may have been. The courts can then decide and they may or may not side with your point of view. That's how it works in America.

Throwing out cases because they are difficult to persue or because it may cause trouble for a business is not how a justice system should work.

Re: Fifty Women Say Salesforce Helped Sex Traffickers Exploit Them

#103
post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting to hear you oppose UBI especially given your experiences with homelessness. What's your reasoning?

I have a whole lot of reasons. It boils down to the fact that I think it amounts to rich people imagining they can cut a small check and make poor people shut up and go away rather than giving them real rights, access to the means to build wealth, etc. Also, every time humans try to "share and share alike" like this -- socialism, communism, etc -- it winds up going bad places. Such idealistic schemes only ever work w…

Interesting angle, thanks for the post.

Re: Fifty Women Say Salesforce Helped Sex Traffickers Exploit Them

#104
post #70
post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Please don't insinuate that someone hasn't read an article. "Did you even read the article? It mentions that" can be shortened to "The article mentions that."

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: Fifty Women Say Salesforce Helped Sex Traffickers Exploit Them

#105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

SalesForce not like Office 2016 where you install and use it. It's like Oracle EBS in that the forms, workflow, processes and etc needs to be customized for your business and use case. SalesForce has consultants and service people that help you with this. They are probably suing because SalesForce consultants or professional services help with the SalesForce setup/integration at BackPage.

There are lots and lots of consultants who implement Salesforce instances who work for themselves. Many do have certifications from Salesforce, but that doesn't make Salesforce accountable for their actions.

SalesForce also has professional services, which are SalesForce employees that help you with the integration. My guess is this is what the suit is about, the professional services.

Re: Fifty Women Say Salesforce Helped Sex Traffickers Exploit Them

#106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The argument is that if a reasonable legal market exists to do things, there's less incentive for the dangerous/harmful ways to do things, hopefully to the point its not worth it. And I hope its fair to say that criminals are in the business of trading risk of arrest/harm for money, and an overwhelming majority of trafficking is for that purpose. I'm not saying you'll fix it overnight, people still smuggle cigarettes…

There will never be a legal market for underage girls, slaves, etc. Some markets just shouldn’t exist, but demand clearly exists for them. Drugs are easy because the black market is so much worse than legalization, but that’s not the case here. There will also be a market for cheaper alternatives to legal offerings, and you can’t get cheaper than slavery. Contrary to what some people desperately need to believe, markets don’t solve everything. If someone wants a disposable prostitute, someone to abuse, someone underage, someone unwilling, they’re not going to care about legal avenues which don’t satisfy their desires.

Re: Fifty Women Say Salesforce Helped Sex Traffickers Exploit Them

#107
This 6* Min. clip (gender equality in the workplace) with Salesforce CEO Mark Benioff is outstanding and apropos to this thread. Benioff is reassuringly pro-equality (women's rights advocate).

https://persagen.com/files/misc/benioff.mp4

------------------------------

Aside: for the techies here, in 2016 Salesforce purchased (Richard Socher's) MetaMind ... a superb group who continue to publish leading edge NLP/NLU papers ...

https://techcrunch.com/2016/04/04/saleforce-acquires-metamin...

https://www.recode.net/2016/4/4/11585854/salesforce-acquisit...

Very forward-thinking.

Re: Fifty Women Say Salesforce Helped Sex Traffickers Exploit Them

#108
post #98
post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Actually missed that they did say a date, which is... After the police seized Backpage in April 2018. "The company is helping to sponsor an anti-human-trafficking event in April" It also said its nonprofit arm spotlighted groups that worked on the front lines of the issue in 2017, which could be said to be PR campaign but it is stretching the meaning of a PR campaign a bit. "The lawsuit includes an order form billed…

I don’t think I said salesforce did the PR campaign before their business dealings.

It’s also not a legal requirement of the claims (it’s just facts that play well to a jury). The threshold legal issue is did salesforce know or should SF have known their goods/products were being used by backpage to facilitate human trafficking/prostitution.

Re: Fifty Women Say Salesforce Helped Sex Traffickers Exploit Them

#109
post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting to hear you oppose UBI especially given your experiences with homelessness. What's your reasoning?

Since I originally mentioned UBI in my reply, I'm going to clarify. Many people oppose UBI in the sense of not expecting UBI as the one solution to every social issue. From that POV, I also oppose UBI. In fact, I think everyone should be enabled to engage in productive and highly-paid work, as far as practicable. However we should acknowledge that people sometimes get stuck in poverty/welfare traps, that traditional…

One problem I see with UBI is that it may just act as a subsidy for companies like Amazon and Uber allowing them to pay their lowest paid workers even less.

Re: Fifty Women Say Salesforce Helped Sex Traffickers Exploit Them

#110
post #3

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

They have money and Backpage doesn't. Lawyers just go after whoever has the most money, hope for vicarious liability, get a big payday while the Salesforce will end up donating money to an anti-sex trafficking organisation.
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