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Craigslist takes personals sections offline in response to FOSTA

craigslist.org

431–440 of 654 posts

Re: Craigslist takes personals sections offline in response to FOSTA

#431

Earlier quoted context omitted.

just googling `w4m` now brings up a ton of prostitution trash >< I don't even want to know what it stands for.

Nothing bad, just "woman (looking) for man". I used to see ads in the local free paper with people looking for relationships. Naturally, m4m, w4w, mw4m etc are also understood.

I learned many fun abbreviations reading the personals in the local newsweekly in middle school/high school (aka the pages you were supposed to pretend weren't there, and the reason school officials were sometimes angry if they saw you with a copy on school grounds) that carried directly over to Craigslist. They used to charge by the word in the personal ad, so people got into a lot of common abbreviation habits.

The newsweeklies that used to carry personals lost a lot of ad revenue when Craigslist took over the space for free. (Some went bankrupt soon after CL added their city, even.) Unlikely that they will get that ad revenue back with CL out of the game, as many won't want to touch personals again for similar reasons to CL, and a lot of the personals space is also moved on to the Match.com/OKCupid/PlentyOfFishes of the internet.

Re: Craigslist takes personals sections offline in response to FOSTA

#432
post #319
post #207

Tonight tens of thousands sex workers are devestated that their safer tool for finding clients is shutting down. Exploitative sex trafficking will continue unabated, but independent working people will be forced into more dangerous situations.

LOL at craigslist being "safe." That site was always sketchy as hell.

Yeah, and without it around they'll have to move to far sketchier platforms or streetwalking. Good job making it worse.

Re: Craigslist takes personals sections offline in response to FOSTA

#433
post #72

I am fucking sick and fucking tired of people interfering with the free choice of individuals in any effort to "fix" society and "help" people. Lawmakers and advocates, have some epistemic humility and acknowledge that your own perspective may be mistaken. Not everything is oppression. Not every activity is injustice. Sometimes, people just fucking disagree.

The goal of the legislation in question is specifically to help individuals that have been coerced, against their free will, into sex trafficking. It is not about voluntary interactions between consenting adults. The legislation might be misguided or ineffective--I haven't really looked into it--but it very definitely isn't about restricting the free choice of individuals.

I've often thought that legislation that is enacted with a specific outcome in mind should come with an initial expiration date. At that point we could evaluate the effectiveness and unintended consequences and decide if the law should be made permanent.

Re: Craigslist takes personals sections offline in response to FOSTA

#434

It seems this and the new Youtube/Reddit bans would push more of this communication to the dark web and/or other private communication channels. I don't think I am comfortable with that. But, hopefully it leads to more support and push for privacy and decentralization. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-03-21/youtube-b... https://motherboard.vice.com/amp/en_us/article/ne9v5k/reddit...

There was also an active market discussion subreddit for peddling steroids: https://www.reddit.com/r/steroidsourcetalk

It has been banned as well.

Re: Craigslist takes personals sections offline in response to FOSTA

#435
post #428

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,…

The question you have to ask is whether or not a "booth babe" would choose such work over others if they had a choice and not merely because it pays the bills.

Re: Craigslist takes personals sections offline in response to FOSTA

#436
post #428

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,…

In this case the typical liberal and the radical liberal are split, much as with trans identity.

To sum it up with too broad of a brush, liberal (mainstream) feminists think sex work is positive, and that only coercion to sex should be criminalized.

Radical feminists see sex “work” as an extreme outlier amongst sex trafficking which by their measure constitutes the vast majority of the sex trade. They would consider a woman who was raped and coerced into the trade as a child, but who has adjusted and now verbally “consents” (by far the typical case) as a sex trafficking victim.

So the radical and liberal feminist agree that person is doing nothing illegal. But many of the radical feminists would support criminal charges for the Johns and the pimps/clubs/etc in the vast majority of cases.

Re: Craigslist takes personals sections offline in response to FOSTA

#437
post #428

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,…

I have no idea if liberals are anti-booth babe or not, but maybe there is a different issue than selling sex(iness)?

Do prudish conservatives approve of booth babes while opposing prostitution?

Re: Craigslist takes personals sections offline in response to FOSTA

#438
post #428

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,…

The question you have to ask is whether or not a "booth babe" would choose such work over others if they had a choice and not merely because it pays the bills.

Or a Brogrammer chooses to program over other thing he would rather do? How is that different than the 'push' to 'get women in tech'?

Re: Craigslist takes personals sections offline in response to FOSTA

#439
post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually .onion prostitution services exist already and have for a long time. There was at least one that was very popular around 5 years ago, but I don't remember the name. But you are absolutely right, this is pushing sex workers further underground and therefore making their lives more dangerous.

Would it be surprising to say that trading in this might include Bitcoin?

Unless they send you suitcase with human being and they don't expect them to get back with cash, then yes, it would be surprising.

Re: Craigslist takes personals sections offline in response to FOSTA

#440
post #333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would it be surprising to say that trading in this might include Bitcoin?

I'd imagine they would use Monero or Zcash nowadays since those are proven fairly more anonymized. Bitcoin is wholly public so all it takes is one identifiable wallet to start profiling addresses they interact with.

You used to be able to tumble the bitcoins but cant realistically do it anymore due to high fees.
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