<story><title>Craigslist takes personals sections offline in response to FOSTA</title><url>https://www.craigslist.org/about/FOSTA</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>safety1st</author><text>The &amp;quot;scorched earth&amp;quot; approach only gets support when the nature and scope of the issues are distorted. What are the real issues in play?&lt;p&gt;One is prostitution, a form of sex work which is illegal in most of the United States. The American public have varying feelings about its legal status, how enforcement should be carried out, etc. Public opinion doesn&amp;#x27;t support measures which endanger sex workers (which FOSTA does), because they&amp;#x27;re already an at-risk group.&lt;p&gt;A separate issue is human trafficking, which is moving people across borders for the purpose of slavery&amp;#x2F;forced labor, including sex slavery. Public opinion is rightly massively against slavery in any form.&lt;p&gt;What I would like to know is, how much slavery was taking place through the Craigslist personals section? How much of it goes on in America? Can we get some real data injected into this discussion about the nature and the extent of actual forced sex labor? Scorched earth tactics might be appropriate if America has developed a serious &lt;i&gt;slavery&lt;/i&gt; problem (again), but they need to be justified with facts.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;ve run across people who want to take a scorched earth approach to eradicating &lt;i&gt;prostitution&lt;/i&gt; (which will not work any more than the war on drugs did). They refer to all prostitution as trafficking in order to conflate the two issues, mislead the public and build support for their radical policies. There is also a class of people who have used FOSTA as an opportunity to expand government power. Neither of these agendas reflect public opinion.</text></item><item><author>SeeDave</author><text>In defense of the &amp;quot;scorched earth approach or nothing&amp;quot; folks: from my perspective... it&amp;#x27;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.&lt;p&gt;If you&amp;#x27;ve ever felt frustrated at an IVR system for routine tasks such as banking, restaurant reservations, canceling a gym membership, checking a gift card balance, etc. then you may understand where the &amp;quot;scorched earth&amp;quot; people are coming from when it comes to advocating for dozens, if not hundreds, of innocent victims who have been raped, exploited, and brutalized.&lt;p&gt;That said, I really wish that I could come forward with a solution to the online sex trafficking problem.</text></item><item><author>DannyBee</author><text>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&amp;#x27;t remember) sponsored working group on online sex trafficking.&lt;p&gt;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 earth approach or nothing.  Literally to the tune of &amp;quot;we should be burning down craigslist entirely, and yahoo, google, microsoft, etc should be required to be scanning your search history and reporting you to the police if they suspect you might be sex trafficking&amp;quot;.&lt;p&gt;It was frustrating enough that two of the other participants literally walked out.&lt;p&gt;The only thing mildly surprising to me here is that it took them ~10 years to get the house to do it.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>dragonwriter</author><text>&amp;gt; A separate issue is human trafficking, which is moving people across borders for the purpose of slavery&amp;#x2F;forced labor, including sex slavery. Public opinion is rightly massively against slavery in any form.&lt;p&gt;The thing is, while some people see it as a separate issue, there is a &lt;i&gt;very common&lt;/i&gt; opinion (deliberately fostered by the anti-prostitution lobby) that prostitution is &lt;i&gt;inherently and inalterably&lt;/i&gt; human trafficking, and invocation of the &lt;i&gt;term&lt;/i&gt; &amp;quot;human trafficking&amp;quot; is now very commonly used as a cover for policies that are directed generally against prostitution, and not at either the place where human trafficking overlaps with prostitution and not at human trafficking unconnected to prostitution.</text></comment>
<story><title>Craigslist takes personals sections offline in response to FOSTA</title><url>https://www.craigslist.org/about/FOSTA</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>safety1st</author><text>The &amp;quot;scorched earth&amp;quot; approach only gets support when the nature and scope of the issues are distorted. What are the real issues in play?&lt;p&gt;One is prostitution, a form of sex work which is illegal in most of the United States. The American public have varying feelings about its legal status, how enforcement should be carried out, etc. Public opinion doesn&amp;#x27;t support measures which endanger sex workers (which FOSTA does), because they&amp;#x27;re already an at-risk group.&lt;p&gt;A separate issue is human trafficking, which is moving people across borders for the purpose of slavery&amp;#x2F;forced labor, including sex slavery. Public opinion is rightly massively against slavery in any form.&lt;p&gt;What I would like to know is, how much slavery was taking place through the Craigslist personals section? How much of it goes on in America? Can we get some real data injected into this discussion about the nature and the extent of actual forced sex labor? Scorched earth tactics might be appropriate if America has developed a serious &lt;i&gt;slavery&lt;/i&gt; problem (again), but they need to be justified with facts.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;ve run across people who want to take a scorched earth approach to eradicating &lt;i&gt;prostitution&lt;/i&gt; (which will not work any more than the war on drugs did). They refer to all prostitution as trafficking in order to conflate the two issues, mislead the public and build support for their radical policies. There is also a class of people who have used FOSTA as an opportunity to expand government power. Neither of these agendas reflect public opinion.</text></item><item><author>SeeDave</author><text>In defense of the &amp;quot;scorched earth approach or nothing&amp;quot; folks: from my perspective... it&amp;#x27;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.&lt;p&gt;If you&amp;#x27;ve ever felt frustrated at an IVR system for routine tasks such as banking, restaurant reservations, canceling a gym membership, checking a gift card balance, etc. then you may understand where the &amp;quot;scorched earth&amp;quot; people are coming from when it comes to advocating for dozens, if not hundreds, of innocent victims who have been raped, exploited, and brutalized.&lt;p&gt;That said, I really wish that I could come forward with a solution to the online sex trafficking problem.</text></item><item><author>DannyBee</author><text>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&amp;#x27;t remember) sponsored working group on online sex trafficking.&lt;p&gt;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 earth approach or nothing.  Literally to the tune of &amp;quot;we should be burning down craigslist entirely, and yahoo, google, microsoft, etc should be required to be scanning your search history and reporting you to the police if they suspect you might be sex trafficking&amp;quot;.&lt;p&gt;It was frustrating enough that two of the other participants literally walked out.&lt;p&gt;The only thing mildly surprising to me here is that it took them ~10 years to get the house to do it.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>Illniyar</author><text>Actually prostitution is legal in Nevada (but not in the big cities). So even that isn&amp;#x27;t so clear cut.</text></comment>