Craigslist takes personals sections offline in response to FOSTA • Hacker News Board

Re: Craigslist takes personals sections offline in response to FOSTA

#441

Post by mtreis86 » Fri, Mar 23, 2018, 3:35 PM UTC

manofmanysmiles wrote: post #423

mtreis86 wrote: post #408

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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.

I have been reading "Strategy: A History" by Lawrence Freedman, and reading the papers and books mentioned in the bibliography as I go.

Re: Craigslist takes personals sections offline in response to FOSTA

#442

Post by meri_dian » Fri, Mar 23, 2018, 3:35 PM UTC

rmrm wrote: 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 think the issue people have with "booth babes" is that it presupposes men will be the ones perusing the booths, or the ones whose attention is worth grabbing.

There's nothing wrong with valuing someone for their good looks, but in a field like tech where we are trying to encourage women to participate more, using BB's at tech events is a reflection of the event organizers choosing to cater only to men, since it's mostly men that the BB's will entice.

Re: Craigslist takes personals sections offline in response to FOSTA

#443

Post by cookiecaper » Fri, Mar 23, 2018, 3:36 PM UTC

cookiecaper wrote: post #182

josephagoss wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What do you see changing? As the internet becomes a resource that is completely boring and out of touch to 15-40 year olds people will flock to a less restrictive system. As eyeballs move over people will invest time and effort into making those systems usable. This happened with the internet and can happen again with decentralized systems.

The internet is pretty much as decentralized as things get while remaining accessible and available to the general public. There is room for some tweaking here, but even if a parallel "NewNet" rose up, it'd come to suffer the same set of problems. "Decentralized", "peer-to-peer", and "distributed" are not just magic words that make the whole world better. Consider BitTorrent as a case study. Probably the largest "dec…

> People are working overtime to make others feel that so much as grunting a sound that sounds similar to the word "Tor" means you're an evil traitor. I don't think that the young, who know little besides the status quo by definition since they haven't experienced much yet..

Hey, only one part got FUBAR'd. Relatively coherent for semi-consciousness! Fixing:

People are working overtime to make others feel that so much as grunting a sound that sounds similar to the word "Tor" means you're an evil traitor. I don't think that the young, who've experienced little beyond the status quo by definition, can be expected to automatically defy and overcome this.

Preserving/rebuilding the internet as a free space will take a much more intense effort than just lobbing the ball across the fence to the next generation and crossing our fingers that they'll figure something out.

Re: Craigslist takes personals sections offline in response to FOSTA

#444

Post by hellofunk » Fri, Mar 23, 2018, 3:38 PM UTC

wu-ikkyu wrote: post #356

hellofunk wrote: post #343

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not in disagreement with you about legalization of prostitution in general, but with regards specifically to sex trafficking, there is much evidence from several countries that legalization actually makes sex trafficking worse -- most likely due to increased demand for a service anyone can enjoy legally.

Could you cite some of this evidence?

The issue comes up quite often in the local papers here in the Netherlands. Some other commenters here have pointed to some other reports from other countries.

Re: Craigslist takes personals sections offline in response to FOSTA

#445

Post by adoago » Fri, Mar 23, 2018, 3:42 PM UTC

edraferi wrote: post #368

anigbrowl wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I've been thinking about this a lot this morning. I think almost every vice would be less damaging to society if it was in the open. Polite society doesn't want to see sex work or drugs, but they still exist. Hiding them makes things much worse for the people directly involved. It's trafficked kids with broken immigration status who are more scared of the cops than their captors. It's drug addicts who OD on tainted d…

Totally. Sunlight is the best disinfectant.

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/sunlight_is_the_best_disinfec...

Re: Craigslist takes personals sections offline in response to FOSTA

#446

Post by dilap » Fri, Mar 23, 2018, 3:44 PM UTC

downandout wrote: post #100

I just read the text of this bill. The way it reads, the entire online dating industry should be closing its doors...tonight. CEOs of these companies face penalties of up to 25 years in prison. Why were there not massive protests over this? I had never heard of this bill before today.

it'll be selectively enforced; small players will be pushed out because they can't afford the liability, and the behemoths will use their weight to ensure nothing happens to them.

Re: Craigslist takes personals sections offline in response to FOSTA

#447

Post by meri_dian » Fri, Mar 23, 2018, 3:46 PM UTC

manofmanysmiles wrote: post #394

edraferi wrote: post #368

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been thinking about this a lot this morning. I think almost every vice would be less damaging to society if it was in the open. Polite society doesn't want to see sex work or drugs, but they still exist. Hiding them makes things much worse for the people directly involved. It's trafficked kids with broken immigration status who are more scared of the cops than their captors. It's drug addicts who OD on tainted d…

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…

"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, or conscious, but what if on some level, there is a motivation to hurt these people who they feel are inferior?"

Doubtful. It's not that they don't want to help them, but more that there's simply not much government can do.

Consider drug addicts. One of my good friends died of an overdose last year, and all of his friends including myself had tried for years to get him to quit. No luck. If someone's closest friends can't help them, what makes us think the government will be anymore effective?

In fact the government has tried through the "war on drugs". You can disagree with the means of the war, but the intent was to help society and the people most vulnerable in society by eliminating drugs through force.

Re: Craigslist takes personals sections offline in response to FOSTA

#448

Post by some_random » Fri, Mar 23, 2018, 3:52 PM UTC

e40 wrote: post #376

safety1st wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for the links! These Wikipedia articles demonstrate my point that the facts and data are very weak in the trafficking discussion, and that data is often misrepresented to exaggerate the size of the problem. - The sex trafficking article states that in 2001 the State Department estimated 50k-100k were trafficked into the US -- this estimate was for both genders but the article erroneously states it is women onl…

Why aren't we doing better studies and getting better data about the problem it purports to solve? I'll probably get downvotes for this, but the Republican leadership is uninterested in facts. They are only interested in their agenda, and if facts get in the way, they will ignore them. It got a lot worse when Newt Gingrich took the reigns in Congress in the 90's. Since Obama was elected, it's gone into hyperdrive. Th…

Everyone is only interested in their agenda in politics, calling for additional research just happens to sometimes further a side's agenda. As of right now, the Democrats are the one's who want additional research in most situations, but that doesn't mean they want more research universally, and when studies have come back negatively (as they sometimes do), they are disregarded.

That said, there does seem to be an overall lack of trust in the scientific method among the political right, the reasons behind which being a bit more complicated than political efficacy.

Re: Craigslist takes personals sections offline in response to FOSTA

#449

Post by TallGuyShort » Fri, Mar 23, 2018, 3:52 PM UTC

always_good wrote: post #92

loteck wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All platforms already restrict content they allow users to post, including CL. People still seem to express themselves freely despite those restrictions. That CL would make a vindictive stand in defense of sex trafficking specifically is just bizarre.

CL openly allowed prostitution on their site just yesterday. I wouldn't be so quick to call it self-evident that there was a better response than to immediately shut down their classifieds. I'm sure there's more to do than just flicking a "filter prostitution: yes / no" switch on their admin panel.

No, CL has had explicit notices posted regarding prostitution for a long time and has actively moderated for overt prostitution. You can't compare now, but if you compare ads on Craigslist to other personals / services websites like Backpage, Craigslist has been quite PG-13-rated for a long time and at least forces posters to be a bit more subtle. The "massage" section is actually mostly pleasantly legit in my experience, assuming you're not in a big city.

Re: Craigslist takes personals sections offline in response to FOSTA

#450

Post by some_random » Fri, Mar 23, 2018, 3:53 PM UTC

cheschire wrote: post #321

Retric wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That number is pretending to be accurate the error bars are rediculus to have 3 digits.

Yeah it seems too odd that the population percentage is 0.018% in so many countries.

From safety1st's excellent comment:

"- The article also doesn't mention that the GSI arrived at 57,700 by designating a tier of the least enslaved countries studied and estimating the number of modern slaves at 0.018% of the population. The same formula is used for Switzerland, Sweden, Germany, etc. I'm not trying to detract from the importance of the issue of modern slavery but mentioning the 57k out of context seems a bit misleading, the US is literally among the best in the world in this area and the number is so rough that it could be off by tens of thousands. And again, it has nothing to do with trafficking, let alone sex trafficking!)"