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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

#171

Post by dragonwriter »

gnicholas wrote: post #170
will_brown wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Not saying it’s wrong, just wondering what the crime is (aiding and abetting? I didn’t say it was a crime I said it creates liability, this is a civil case about civil liability after all. For example there are tons of civil cases against businesses that sell ammunition, there are endless such cases against Walmart alone, where the ammunition ends up being used in the commission of a crime. More often than not Walma…

Would the civil liability be under tort law or something else? The first requirement for tort liability is that the defendant owe a duty of care to the plaintiff. There are some exceptions to this, but I’d be curious to know the theory here. I understand that people sue Walmart for ammo sales and such, but is there any chance that a shop owner who sells, for example, duct tape, a ski mask, and zip ties to a kidnapper…

> Would the civil liability be under tort law or something else?

One obvious basis would be in tort, more specifically negligence; similar to (perhaps a subtype of) negligent entrustment.

> The first requirement for tort liability is that the defendant owe a duty of care to the plaintiff.

That's the first requirement for negligence, not all tort liability.

> I understand that people sue Walmart for ammo sales and such, but is there any chance that a shop owner who sells, for example, duct tape, a ski mask, and zip ties to a kidnapper could have even civil liability?

Yes, quite likely, if they actually knew, or reasonably should have known, the kidnapper intended to use it in a kidnapping, and the harms at issue are of a time that should be reasonably foreseen in such use.

> The shop owner has no legal duty (even civil) to the potential victim

True under the very old common law where duty was found only in privity, but untrue with the modern rule which incorporates the general duty of care—which is generally a duty to act so as not to cause reasonably foreseeable harm.

Re: Fifty Women Say Salesforce Helped Sex Traffickers Exploit Them

#172

Post by anoncoward111 »

sctb wrote: post #154
anoncoward111 wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's like know your customer laws, but for everything ! Are you a grocery store that sells food to a potential jaywalker? You better find out!!

We've asked you many times to please post substantively, and since this is still an issue we've banned the account. We're happy to unban accounts if you email hn@ycombinator.com and commit to following the guidelines. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

you asked me twice, and this isnt unsubstantive

Re: Fifty Women Say Salesforce Helped Sex Traffickers Exploit Them

#173

Post by will_brown »

gnicholas wrote: post #170
will_brown wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Not saying it’s wrong, just wondering what the crime is (aiding and abetting? I didn’t say it was a crime I said it creates liability, this is a civil case about civil liability after all. For example there are tons of civil cases against businesses that sell ammunition, there are endless such cases against Walmart alone, where the ammunition ends up being used in the commission of a crime. More often than not Walma…

Would the civil liability be under tort law or something else? The first requirement for tort liability is that the defendant owe a duty of care to the plaintiff. There are some exceptions to this, but I’d be curious to know the theory here. I understand that people sue Walmart for ammo sales and such, but is there any chance that a shop owner who sells, for example, duct tape, a ski mask, and zip ties to a kidnapper…

>shop owner who sells, for example, duct tape, a ski mask, and zip ties to a kidnapper could have even civil liability?

I feel this has been exhaustively explained and reexplained throughout the thread, so the answer is: maybe...if the shop owner knew or should have known those items would be used in the commission of a crime, then yes there is potential liability. In your example even if the kidnapper didn’t disclose his intent the particular grouping of items may in fact suggest the shop owner knew or should have known, and of course other facts are relevant. For example, it’s a small town and the shop owner knows the purchaser as a felon with a history of violent crimes using duct tape and a ski mask.

That said maybe the facts suggest the shop owner didn’t know and had no reason to even predict the items would be used in a crime (maybe these are items typically purchased together from the shop).

As dragonwriter stated these cases are typically negligence cases, especially in firearms/ammo cases where there is federal law to protect arms dealers (thank NRA).

Here is a link to an article about a ammo case against Walmart (sold bullets to a drunk guy who gave the bullets to a kid after walking outside and 15 minutes after purchase shot and killed someone), my guess is Walmart won’t be found negligent. The article notes a second case where a gun shop sold a gun to someone who workers had suspicions was buying the gun for someone else (the gun was bought for someone else who used it to kill 2 police), they were found liable. https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.cnbc.com/amp/2016/01/08/wal...

Here is a second article against Walmart again where Walmart entered into a confidential settlement before trial. https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.mcall.com/news/breaking/mc-...

Sorry don’t have the time now to pull up the case styles.

Re: Fifty Women Say Salesforce Helped Sex Traffickers Exploit Them

#175

Post by vips7L »

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…

Most "Salesforce" devs arent employed by Salesforce inc. The devs that customize the platform are usually consultants or employed by the businesses using the platform.

Re: Fifty Women Say Salesforce Helped Sex Traffickers Exploit Them

#176

Post by vips7L »

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…

> (albeit a horrible one I never want to work with again).

As a current Salesforce developer this hits home. I cannot wait to get out and back to using real platforms and languages.

I'll honestly write any language at this point just not to do SFDC.

Re: Fifty Women Say Salesforce Helped Sex Traffickers Exploit Them

#177

Post by belorn »

will_brown wrote: post #108
belorn wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Party A had done X and Y when it elected to do Z. I kind of read that as X and Y occurring before Z.

As for the subject matter if saleforce knew in 2016 what the FBI acted on in 2018, I don't know. It leaves me with several large questions, the biggest being about why the site lasted for as long as it did. The FBI received continuously information about child sex trafficking and prostitution, and had several court cases dating back to at least 2010.

From a moral perspective its an valid discussion to ask if saleforce should consider their ethical consideration of how their customers utilize their goods and products, but from a legal perspective I kind of look at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backpage#Legal_decisions and see a complete failure from the legal system to tell the world if the behavior of backpage was illegal. It would not surprise me if saleforced did ask their lawyers and got a OK back.

Re: Fifty Women Say Salesforce Helped Sex Traffickers Exploit Them

#178

Post by dragonsngoblins »

JamesBarney wrote: post #143
Pharmakon wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

This has been studied with pornography and sex crimes and it seems like there are two main findings. People who consume more pornography and more violent pornography tend to be more violent people. And when societies are exposed to more pornography the number of sex crimes stays the same or drops. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effects_of_pornography

"People who consume more pornography and more violent pornography tend to be more violent people."

I feel like this is probably correlation than causation. It seems obvious to me that people who want to be violent are more likely to both fantasise about it and commit it. Further consuming any sort of vice to degrees well past the norm (pornography, alcohol, drugs, food, sex, video games, etc.) seems likely to be a sign of poor impulse control, which obviously means they are more likely to just be violent when they feel like it.

When taken with the fact that overall pornography exposure within a culture seems to either not impact or reduce the amount of sex crime I'd argue that desire to do thing causes both fantasies and increased likelihood of doing that thing.

Re: Fifty Women Say Salesforce Helped Sex Traffickers Exploit Them

#180

Post by DoreenMichele »

nickpsecurity wrote: post #160
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…

"it winds up being just as bad as or worse than being pimped. It winds up being done to benefit male clients at the expense of female sex workers, basically." I did an essay on legalization in college after a lot of research. I favor decriminalization, too, but I strongly disagree that regulation is just as bad or worse. The biggest problem I found was that prostitutes could be beaten, raped, and murdered with either…

The biggest problem I found was that prostitutes could be beaten, raped, and murdered with either no legal recourse or much less action by police.

This is certainly a huge, huge issue that I would like to see go away.

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