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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

#121
post #115
post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Full legalization increases trafficking and allows brothels, which are basically pimps who are able to operate legally. http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/45198/1/Neumayer_Legalized_Prostitu... The Nordic Model - decriminalization of selling, with criminalization of purchasing - protects sex workers from pimps and has been very successful in the countries that have instituted it.

Human trafficking is just another word for illegal immigration. It just sounds more sinister and it gives a way for anti-immigration folks to sound humane and pretend like they care about the trafficked people, when they really care about not letting them in. As long as you have inescapable poverty and hardship in some countries, and no legal ways for people to get in, you'll have human trafficking. The only way to s…

> Human trafficking is just another word for illegal immigration.

No, it's not, because human trafficking can occur without crossing an limited-migration border.

As usually used, it's very close to the union of de facto slavery and sex work. (To be fair, those categories have significant overlap, but there's a lot of push to include the parts of the latter that aren't the former within the reach of of the term.)

Re: Fifty Women Say Salesforce Helped Sex Traffickers Exploit Them

#122
post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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, mark…

> There will never be a legal market for underage girls, slaves, etc. Tangential, but I feel there is always an effort to cater to part of these "dark" markets with as harmless as possible ersatz (underage fictional porn, dolls/robotics, etc), but there will still be a strong negative reaction from some part of the society trying to ban the ersatz as a slippery slope. I get that for any action there will always be a…

It’s a very emotional subject for a lot of people, and while like you I see ersatz products as a good choice for people who would otherwise engage in the real thing, I also know that it’s a hard position to promulgate. For one, there isn’t a clear consensus as to whether or not (for example) fantasy underage porn/dolls acts to reduce or increase offender’s likliehood to offend. There is the argument that it can be a pressure relief valve, and an argument that it reinforces tendencies and like any addiction will tend to build tolerance. When the fakes stop being effective then maybe all they achieve is acting as a kind of practice.

It’s known that poeple with violent, vivid fantasies for example, are at higher risk for acting out violently than people without them. Is it correlation or causation? We don’t know. So it’s hard to take this mass of uncertainty to a public that mostly wants to “hang them all” where sex offenders are concerned, and make a case for ersatz interactions.

Part of this is moralizing, part of it is true uncertainty, and part of it is understandable revulsion.

Re: Fifty Women Say Salesforce Helped Sex Traffickers Exploit Them

#123

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…

>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. How much of that was from the EFF or other tech industry allies about avoiding any weakening of Section 230? The actual way to make things safer for sex workers is what you mentioned, decriminalization.

How much of that was from the EFF or other tech industry allies about avoiding any weakening of Section 230?

I couldn't say. I can say at least some of it was first-hand testimony from former sex workers who likely had never heard of EFF or Section 230. They focused on things like what a mess their life was, why they ended up doing sex work to begin with and why they credit Backpage with "saving their life" by allowing them to check out clients beforehand for safety purposes, etc.

I'm kind of a demographic outlier for HN. I tend to run in different circles, so to speak, from most folks here. (I had to google EFF and Section 230 to answer your question. I didn't readily know what you were even asking.)

Re: Fifty Women Say Salesforce Helped Sex Traffickers Exploit Them

#124
post #94

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…

>SalesForce was well aware of backpages business practices and activities backpage had been doing its business in the open in USA for almost 10 years when it became client of Salesforce in 2013. So, until 2018 no DA was bothered by the human trafficking supposedly rampant on backpage during that time, while it sounds that it was Salesforce's burden to do that the DAs hadn't and wouldn't for years - i.e. to perform in…

>Do we really want a massive SaaS company to criminally investigate its clients at its own initiative?

I think my arms dealer provides a much clearer example of facts removed from tech where people in HN are understandably defensive.

The law doesn’t require a seller of goods/services to investigate a buyers intent, but the law does create liability if the seller knew or should have known the buyer intended to use the good/service in the commission of a crime.

So in the case of an arms dealer if the buyer uses the gun in a crime, the arms dealer is only liable if they knew or should have known, but the law isn’t requiring the seller investigate (but if facts tend to show the buyer was discussing using the gun for crime xyz to the seller, then yes the seller could be liable).

I think this is good, others may disagree and say sellers should be able to sell goods/services where they know the buyer intends to use the same in commission of a crime...but the investigation is beyond the legal scope of what is required by law and I don’t think anyone is suggested that become the law.

Re: Fifty Women Say Salesforce Helped Sex Traffickers Exploit Them

#125
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 prosecute a shopkeeper who sells alcohol to an adult knowing that adult is buying it for someone underage?

Do we prosecute bartenders who serve alcohol to people who are drunk and they know are going to drive home?

Yes we do.

Stupid laws aren't always stupid.

Re: Fifty Women Say Salesforce Helped Sex Traffickers Exploit Them

#126
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…

> Also, every time humans try to "share and share alike" like this -- socialism, communism, etc -- it winds up going bad places.

How do you reconcile that with the quite successful Scandinavian (and to a lesser extent Canadian and other) examples of quite left/socialist leaning societies?

I hear this argument ("It just doesn't work!") quite often but it sounds to me to be just parroting far-right propaganda, and selectively looking at evidence that supports that line of thinking (eg russia/china which have a lot of issues that aren't really tied to the left/right spectrum).

[edit] I actually like the reasonable approach you're taking in the rest of your comment :) I'm just picking at that one statement as I see it fairly often and really have a hard time understanding it.

Re: Fifty Women Say Salesforce Helped Sex Traffickers Exploit Them

#127
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…

> 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

This reminds me of the dystopian option in Manna http://marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm

Re: Fifty Women Say Salesforce Helped Sex Traffickers Exploit Them

#128

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 (hum…

To be clear, Backpage didn't get shut down for merely hosting prostitution ads. They got shut down for actively editing ads featuring minors to remove references to their age, money laundering, purposefully not reporting missing and exploited children, and few other things that showed they were not just a neutral party displaying ads.

Re: Fifty Women Say Salesforce Helped Sex Traffickers Exploit Them

#129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> Also, every time humans try to "share and share alike" like this -- socialism, communism, etc -- it winds up going bad places. How do you reconcile that with the quite successful Scandinavian (and to a lesser extent Canadian and other) examples of quite left/socialist leaning societies? I hear this argument ("It just doesn't work!") quite often but it sounds to me to be just parroting far-right propaganda, and sele…

From what I've read, they do things in line with what I advocate, such as making healthcare available to all, not free money for existing.

Re: Fifty Women Say Salesforce Helped Sex Traffickers Exploit Them

#130
post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Human trafficking is just another word for illegal immigration. It just sounds more sinister and it gives a way for anti-immigration folks to sound humane and pretend like they care about the trafficked people, when they really care about not letting them in. As long as you have inescapable poverty and hardship in some countries, and no legal ways for people to get in, you'll have human trafficking. The only way to s…

> Human trafficking is just another word for illegal immigration. No, it's not, because human trafficking can occur without crossing an limited-migration border. As usually used, it's very close to the union of de facto slavery and sex work. (To be fair, those categories have significant overlap, but there's a lot of push to include the parts of the latter that aren't the former within the reach of of the term.)

You mean there are people being "human trafficked" in their countries of origin? Can you provide an example?
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