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Craigslist Censored: Adult Section Comes Down

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Re: Craigslist Censored: Adult Section Comes Down

#71

Post by korch »

sliverstorm wrote: post #65
korch wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Craigslist makes over $100 million a year. And they have just 60 or so employees. And I bet they have dirt cheap fixed costs. The website hasn't fucking changed in a decade, and it's more popular than ever! They're probably the Internet company with the highest profit margins! Craiglist is the fucking showcase example of Metcalfe's law. But like bank robbers who foolishly think they wouldn't get caught on the 10th ro…

Ok, I didn't realize they make that much money, but looking into it they still seem to make $0 from personals, so why would they hire a hundred lobbyists to protect their $0 source of income?

Each ad posted to the adult services section costs $10 per post. Last year CL made an estimated ~$36 million off of their escort ads.

Re: Craigslist Censored: Adult Section Comes Down

#72

Post by jfager »

jawngee wrote: post #68
patio11 wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, there are dodgy brothels There are "dodgy" brothels like the American South had "dodgy" cotton plantations in the 19th century. the normal ones are mostly college girls who are earning a bunch of extra cash This is a myth which society uses to let it sleep at night about them. (The same myth is widely held about strippers in the United States, and is equally false there.) Prostitution, nice clean business, step…

You keep quoting numbers, but you never talk about why those numbers exist. In Queensland, the reason that number is so high is because the government has made it very hard and very expensive for brothels to go legal, and the majority that do go broke. It is more profitable to run an illegal one, than it is to operate a legal one. So though you are statistically correct, your reasoning is not. Additionally, your own…

You can't extrapolate from the experience of high-end strippers in places like NYC, Vegas, or Miami. That's like hanging out in major league stadiums and concluding that pro baseball players must love their millions, ignoring that the majority are stuck down in the farm system barely making a living wage.

Re: Craigslist Censored: Adult Section Comes Down

#73

Post by sliverstorm »

korch wrote: post #71
sliverstorm wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok, I didn't realize they make that much money, but looking into it they still seem to make $0 from personals, so why would they hire a hundred lobbyists to protect their $0 source of income?

Each ad posted to the adult services section costs $10 per post. Last year CL made an estimated ~$36 million off of their escort ads.

Oh, I didn't realize that either. Clearly, I don't post in adult services much...

Re: Craigslist Censored: Adult Section Comes Down

#74

Post by ck2 »

bmelton wrote: post #38
ck2 wrote: post #37

Congrats on CL on finally taking the high road without being legally forced to first. Claiming that it should be okay to do something questionable because everyone else does it is never the right attitude. Prostitution ads should not be right next to ads for cars, even if others do it. Those that claim how many illegal things would be better if legalized and regulated are naive.

The points have been discussed so often elsewhere in this thread, but I just wanted to point out that, for me at least, this is very much the low road. Bowing down to socio-political pressure without being demanded to, for a service that is very clearly popular and (I believe) ought to be legal is, in my opinion, spineless. I understand that their heart is in the right place, and I'm very understanding that their bel…

The problem is prostitution is not victimless crime like most men want to believe.

No-one can possibly believe someone wants to be a prostitute.

Not only are some girls forced into it by pimps and syndicate hooking them on drugs to guarantee their "employment", even if others just enter into it out of desperation for quick cash, once you are down that path it can screw up your life forever.

So yeah, condoning it and promoting it and making it easily available on sites like CL has to be prevented for the better of society over the desire of men to have effortlessly accessible sex.

I consider that taking the high road, thinking of others before yourself. I'm under no delusion that it's going to drop even 1% with CL's listings gone, but it's still the right thing to do.

Re: Craigslist Censored: Adult Section Comes Down

#75

Post by trustfundbaby »

kelnos wrote: post #53
Maascamp wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stop whining. It's not your data.

Actually, if jbellis posts to CL, some of it is his data. It belongs to the people who post it, not CL. See the terms of use: http://www.craigslist.org/about/terms.of.use Notably section 3, "CONTENT," and the 2nd paragraph of section 14, "PROPRIETARY RIGHTS," in which they explicitly disclaim ownership: "Although craigslist does not claim ownership of content that its users post..."

excellent ...

now if only we could go get everyone who posted listings to sign off on allowing us access their data we could build an API in no time.

Re: Craigslist Censored: Adult Section Comes Down

#76

Post by zavulon »

jfager wrote: post #72
jawngee wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You keep quoting numbers, but you never talk about why those numbers exist. In Queensland, the reason that number is so high is because the government has made it very hard and very expensive for brothels to go legal, and the majority that do go broke. It is more profitable to run an illegal one, than it is to operate a legal one. So though you are statistically correct, your reasoning is not. Additionally, your own…

You can't extrapolate from the experience of high-end strippers in places like NYC, Vegas, or Miami. That's like hanging out in major league stadiums and concluding that pro baseball players must love their millions, ignoring that the majority are stuck down in the farm system barely making a living wage.

That's a pretty ridiculous analogy. Strippers don't have to toil in a minor league strip club in Idaho for five years before finally "making it" to NYC. All it takes is a bus ticket and a lot of balls (figuratively)

Re: Craigslist Censored: Adult Section Comes Down

#77

Post by raganwald »

TGJ wrote: post #43
raganwald wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am struggling with the notion of a country that will defend to the death the rights of its citizens to purchase guns and use hateful speech, but simultaneously attack sex with such fundamentalist zeal. I'm experiencing cognitive dissonance.

The country defends the right to speech, whether you are hateful with it or not is your choice. The country defends the right of guns to remind the government that the population is armed and willing to stand up to oppressive regimes. Proliferation of sex outside of the family unit, destroys the family unit. Seems straight forward to me.

You are simply repeating what I said. Of course I understand that you do not allow the govt. to pass laws restricting speech, and of course you allow and even celebrate hateful speech. And yes, you dearly cherish the quaint notion of an armed rebellion: That's how you were founded.

But nothing you have said explains why your laws celebrate freedom for the first two cases: You trust citizens with the right to speak and the right to manage their own deadly weapons, but in the third case you are suddenly "You can't be trusted to make your own choices."

Thus, I find your answer is a non-answer, because it does not explain the dichotomy. Furthermore, your third point confuses me. Are you saying that it is an American value to avoid sex before or outside of a marriage conducted for the purpose of raising children?

Re: Craigslist Censored: Adult Section Comes Down

#78

Post by jfager »

This seems a bit petulant to me.

There is real, substantive criticism of how CL handles adult ads independent of grandstanding politicians, hand-wringing moralists, and sensationalist media. These groups are always going to be flinging shit around; why dignify them by pretending to be their victim?

And why refuse to acknowledge the legitimate issues that are raised? CL has said nothing in response to critics who have pointed out that independent research groups have been able to place ads that contradict CL's stated policies, or that relevant authorities have said they've received few to no reports of suspicious activity from CL. Refusing to acknowledge these problems, and instead focusing on the misdeeds or weakest arguments of their most sensational critics, undermines CL's credibility quite a bit.

And if you are going to shut the section down on your own, just do it. You don't get any pity for claiming you've been censored when there's been no actual legal pressure applied. You haven't been censored, you just caved.

Re: Craigslist Censored: Adult Section Comes Down

#79

Post by korch »

joe_the_user wrote: post #51
sliverstorm wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> send one hundred or more paid lobbyists to DC. With what money? Not only does Craigslist not really have any profitable business interests to protect, but they don't have the money to do that even if they wanted to.

I don't think the down votes are warranted here. Craigslist makes money but this money is minimal compared to the amount of money its taking from the billion-dollar newspaper industry. Sending 100+ lobbyists to Washington would cost at least a good chunk of the ~$100 million/year that craigslist makes. It's reasonable to argue that it would make no sense to do this.

A wise man once said, it takes money to make money.

Rather than viewing a modest annual expense of $20 million on lobbyists and branding, look at it as protection money that enables the revenue stream to continue and to grow. If the choice comes down to either shutting down all of Craigslist because they can't possibly moderate every post after hookers are using their freedom of speech to posti ads in every category, or paying lobbyists to keep a lid on things from DC and thereby continue the operations, then the arithmetic shows CL loses more if they don't pay the lobbyists.

I loathe the entire DC lobbyist racket as much as the next guy, and it truly is the scourge of our democracy, but it works! Otherwise why else would all of corporate America spend such lavish amounts on lobbying?

Re: Craigslist Censored: Adult Section Comes Down

#80

Post by korch »

trustfundbaby wrote: post #75
kelnos wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually, if jbellis posts to CL, some of it is his data. It belongs to the people who post it, not CL. See the terms of use: http://www.craigslist.org/about/terms.of.use Notably section 3, "CONTENT," and the 2nd paragraph of section 14, "PROPRIETARY RIGHTS," in which they explicitly disclaim ownership: "Although craigslist does not claim ownership of content that its users post..."

excellent ... now if only we could go get everyone who posted listings to sign off on allowing us access their data we could build an API in no time.

If Craigslist actually stood by their community-centric, "everybody share" principles, rather than wear a fake mask of anti-corporatism over their money-grubbing true face, then Craigslist themselves would put a single checkbox on every Craigslist post form letting the user make that choice. And the default state of that checkbox would be "yes."

Then CL could just offer a bare-bones, REST, read-only firehose API to access those posts. Just like how Twitter does it. This entire project would probably take the developers at CL a month to roll out into prod. Hell, knowing how software shops work, they probably already have 3 private internal versions of it that were shelved by the ignorant, risk-averse management who only fear change and don't know how to tread water in the meandering river of technology and Internet society.

Wild idea for the Techcrunch rumor mill in 2011: it's too bad Twitter doesn't buy or merge with CL, and in absorbing CL, make them be more open and community-centric.

Perhaps CL will see the light and open up an API, as the newspapers get more desperate and turn up the dial on the hate. CL is going to need to show off something, anything to take the spot light off themselves before the wolves rush in now that they're injured & bleeding.

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