Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Craigslist takes personals sections offline in response to FOSTA

craigslist.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

421–430 of 654 posts

Re: Craigslist takes personals sections offline in response to FOSTA

#421

Post by allannienhuis »

NotSammyHagar wrote: post #411
cornholio wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you've ever felt frustrated at an IVR system for routine tasks such as banking, restaurant reservations [...] hundreds, of innocent victims who have been raped, exploited, and brutalized. How can you compare being the victim of misdesigned automated system, who has no conscience and follows blind rules, to being the victim of a trafficker who has full understanding and responsibility for what he's doing and expl…

> High explosives, nuclear material, anonymous banking are all examples of technologies that, while useful, can and should be restricted. I'm not sure how to take your comments, based on your other thoughts. We shouldn't have anonymous banking, i.e. cryptocurrency or even cash?

I don't think he said anonymous banking should't be available at all - he explicitly said it was useful. But he also said it should be restricted for similar reasons the other things in his list should be restricted, because significant harm can be done to the public/society with it in the hands of some people. Money laundering is one example that comes to mind. If you're a proponent of Crypto currencies you've probably heard similar statements before - this criticism isn't new.

Re: Craigslist takes personals sections offline in response to FOSTA

#422

Post by djsumdog »

DannyBee wrote: post #44

This is not surprising, but sad. Years ago, i was dragged (i was the only engineer in the local office) into a whitehouse (or maybe it was state department, i can't remember) sponsored working group on online sex trafficking. The non-profits dedicated to fighting this, while seemingly well-intentioned, were completely and totally unwilling to see any other perspective or try to find shared ground. It was scorched ear…

Was that during the 1994 Child Safety Protection Act?

Re: Craigslist takes personals sections offline in response to FOSTA

#423

Post by manofmanysmiles »

mtreis86 wrote: post #408
manofmanysmiles wrote: post #394

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been thinking about this peripherally for a while, especially the bigger picture when some law is passed, and it seems exceptionally out of touch with the reality, and does more harm than good. A depressing thought: What if we apply something akin to Occam's Razor? What if the lawmakers want to hurt the people struggling at at the lower rungs of society? To me it feels unlikely it is intentional in most cases, o…

"The state is the institution or complex of institutions which bases itself on the availability of forcible coercion by special agencies of society in order to maintain the dominance of a ruling class, preserve the existing property relations from basic change and keep all other classes in subjection." Hal Draper

Thanks, that’s very succinctly put!

Besides Hal Draper, what authors would you recommend to further explore this thought? I’m educated as a programmer and only beginning to deliberately explore ideas outside of science and engineering.

Re: Craigslist takes personals sections offline in response to FOSTA

#424

Post by ianamartin »

DannyBee wrote: post #44

This is not surprising, but sad. Years ago, i was dragged (i was the only engineer in the local office) into a whitehouse (or maybe it was state department, i can't remember) sponsored working group on online sex trafficking. The non-profits dedicated to fighting this, while seemingly well-intentioned, were completely and totally unwilling to see any other perspective or try to find shared ground. It was scorched ear…

Well in the case of this particular bill, at least some of the advocates for sex workers had some sense and spoke loudly and clearly about the bad consequences of this law.

https://www.allure.com/story/sesta-sex-trafficking-bill-cele...

https://survivorsagainstsesta.org/about-sesta/

https://survivorsagainstsesta.files.wordpress.com/2018/03/se...

https://injusticetoday.com/proposed-federal-trafficking-legi...

Re: Craigslist takes personals sections offline in response to FOSTA

#425

Post by allannienhuis »

syshum wrote: post #360
monk_e_boy wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Step 2. Stop Diverting Police Resources to enforcing laws > on what consenting Adults do on their own time (both > Prostitution and Drugs) But society has rules, it's the grey areas that are always going to be in contention. I'm sure you want the police and laws there to protect children from sexual exploitation. The same with drugs, you don't want smack and cocaine being sold in Boots. So there has to be a law, an…

>I'm sure you want the police and laws there to protect children from sexual exploitation. Which is why I clearly said ADULT in my response. We protect children from all manner of things because their brains have not formed to the point where we as a society believe they can make rational choices for themselves However if we are going to have a free society at some point you become an adult, at which point I do not b…

I believe 'the boot' is a British term for the trunk of an automobile, which I think fits the bill here :)

Re: Craigslist takes personals sections offline in response to FOSTA

#426

Post by musage »

mtreis86 wrote: post #408
manofmanysmiles wrote: post #394

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been thinking about this peripherally for a while, especially the bigger picture when some law is passed, and it seems exceptionally out of touch with the reality, and does more harm than good. A depressing thought: What if we apply something akin to Occam's Razor? What if the lawmakers want to hurt the people struggling at at the lower rungs of society? To me it feels unlikely it is intentional in most cases, o…

"The state is the institution or complex of institutions which bases itself on the availability of forcible coercion by special agencies of society in order to maintain the dominance of a ruling class, preserve the existing property relations from basic change and keep all other classes in subjection." Hal Draper

> What has been created by this half century of massive corporate propaganda is what's called "anti-politics". So that anything that goes wrong, you blame the government. Well okay, there's plenty to blame the government about, but the government is the one institution that people can change... the one institution that you can affect without institutional change. That's exactly why all the anger and fear has been directed at the government. The government has a defect - it's potentially democratic. Corporations have no defect - they're pure tyrannies. So therefore you want to keep corporations invisible, and focus all anger on the government. So if you don't like something, you know, your wages are going down, you blame the government. Not blame the guys in the Fortune 500, because you don't read the Fortune 500. You just read what they tell you in the newspapers... so you don't read about the dazzling profits and the stupendous dizz, and the wages going down and so on, all you know is that the bad government is doing something, so let's get mad at the government.

-- Noam Chomsky

Re: Craigslist takes personals sections offline in response to FOSTA

#428

Post by rmrm »

I find a somewhat irresolvable issue on the liberal viewpoint of female sexuality and using sex to sell things (or selling sex directly)

I see a lot of push back and negativity towards things like "booth babes" and other models that are employed to use their sexuality to help sell something. And I dont really argue with that, from a consumer angle. But I do also hear and feel for those models, who likely rightly say, why am I now out of a job? How is that empowering?

On the other hand, I think typically liberal viewpoint would be that prostitution should be made more legal and out of the shadows, and of course people can sell sex. Which I also dont disagree with.

As it relates to laws and rights, it isn't in conflict - they both should be legal. But the underlying feelings and opnions about them, it seems somewhat unresolved. There seems to be more hatred towards the objectification of women, but not targeted at say strippers. It doesn't seem totally coherent.

Re: Craigslist takes personals sections offline in response to FOSTA

#429

Post by vibrio »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #314
theandrewbailey wrote: post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If NASA discovered oil on Mars, we'd be there years ago. (Something liberation something something...)

FWIW, it's raining natural gas on Titan.

...and raining diamonds on Saturn and Jupiter. Surely there is a frothy Series A to be had here somewhere.

Re: Craigslist takes personals sections offline in response to FOSTA

#430

Post by balls187 »

anigbrowl wrote: post #131
SeeDave wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In defense of the "scorched earth approach or nothing" folks: from my perspective... it's a completely and totally human response to faceless, blameless, unapproachable (from their perspective) perpetrators and facilitators of systematic abuse and exploitation of innocent and vulnerable people. If you've ever felt frustrated at an IVR system for routine tasks such as banking, restaurant reservations, canceling a gym…

Great, like the trade is going to suddenly end. All they've achieved is 'out of sight, out of mind.' I'm quite annoyed about this, both because it affects numerous friends of mine who are sex workers and are now scrambling to find alternatives to working on the street, where they're far less safe, and on a more pedestrian level because I met my wife on a Craigslist date years ago. Life is too short to make excuses fo…

> Life is too short to make excuses for stupid behavior.

Like meeting strangers on the internet and buying/selling sex for money? If it was legal, it could be better regulated, and they could operate with more safety...but it's not legal. While I'm in favor of decriminalizing adults engaging in adult behavior, I don't believe anyone goes into selling sex with a healthy attitude towards sex. They're typically victims of sexual abuse at a young age, which has warped their perspective, leading them to believe that their biggest value is to sell their bodies for sex.

Post reply on HN