
Hours After FOSTA Passes, Reddit Bans 'Escorts' and 'SugarDaddy' Communities - ayanai
https://reason.com/blog/2018/03/22/reddit-bans-escort-subreddits
======
aaomidi
I don't have a solution, I'm just ranting here. Sorry.

This is just an extension of conservatism being scared of sex and women going
their own way.

Like it or not, prostitution has helped many people rise out of poverty and
even make societies (the "west" back in the early US days) around their
business.

Laws like this are very hard to vote against because of TV ads opponents of
politicians could run demonizing them.

~~~
txsh
The bill passed the senate 97-2. This is about censorship and liberals want
censorship just as much as conservatives do.

Voting against it:

Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Oregon)

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Kentucky)

~~~
blattimwind
Why does "liberal" mean something essentially unrelated to "liberal" in
American politics? How did that come about?

~~~
freehunter
Liberal compared to the other party, which is far-right.

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lsiebert
This is a pretty good legal analysis of the first amendment issues this
raises.

[https://blog.ericgoldman.org/archives/2018/03/why-fostas-
res...](https://blog.ericgoldman.org/archives/2018/03/why-fostas-restriction-
on-prostitution-promotion-violates-the-first-amendment-guest-blog-post.htm)

I'd point out that merely operating an interactive service provider with the
intent to promote or facilitate prostitution is criminalized... if you work at
a company that might get sued, you probably want to start looking for a new
job.

Conspiring or attempting as well... if you talk about with intent or try to
figure out a way to facilitate prostitution, that's ostensibly illegal too.

That said, the chilling effect of removing immunity under 230 is the greater
concern, as it's more likely to withstand the first amendment challenge, from
what I can tell. Of course that assumes that there would be such a challenge,
from someone.

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dgreensp
r/SexWorkers seems to have survived, thanks to its long-standing policies
against advertising/transactions, so sex workers can still talk about sex
work, in theory and practice, for now.

~~~
candiodari
And the truth is that if this was hosted in almost any country other than the
US, that would not be true. The US is extremely flexible in that regard.

If websites follow local laws these communities, whatever value they have,
will disappear. In fact anything that reminds society of the existence of
anything that they feel is shameful (e.g. sex workers in Saudi Arabia [1]).
Right along with any discussion anything else that either the state itself or
society considers shames them.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prostitution_in_Saudi_Arabia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prostitution_in_Saudi_Arabia)

The net result: "Saudi Arabia is one of the largest consumers of domestic
workers. Around 30% of Saudi's population of 27.3 million are immigrants from
other countries. The Law requires that all of the expatriates in Saudi Arabia
should have a employment contract while they are in the country. [6] But with
some unfair work practices such as sexual harassment, extreme working
conditions, and other human rights violations, many try to escape their
employers. Runaways are often kidnapped and forced into prostitution [7]
Prostitutes tend to be mostly from Nigeria, Ethiopia,[8] Yemen, Morocco,
Pakistan, Nigeria, Ethiopia, and Tajikistan .[9] As of right now, there are no
strict laws in force pertaining to human trafficking. In 2013, the government
did not report any prosecutions or convictions of alleged human
traffickers.[7] Foreign prostitutes who are arrested by the Saudi vice police
face deportation.[8]"

~~~
xeeeeeeeeeeenu
>And the truth is that if this was hosted in almost any country other than the
US, that would not be true. The US is extremely flexible in that regard.

What? In a large part of Europe prostitution is fully legal[1]. For example,
in Poland we have very popular websites solely dedicated for sexual services
advertisements[2], with photos and price lists.

[1] -
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prostitution_law#/media/File:P...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prostitution_law#/media/File:Prostitution_laws_of_the_world.PNG)

[2] - like roksa.pl or odloty.pl

~~~
blattimwind
What's PiS stance on this?

~~~
xeeeeeeeeeeenu
I don't think they have ever said anything about it. Currently this topic
doesn't exist in Poland's political debate.

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sergers
Craigslist has also shutdown their "casual encounters".

As it was a jumping spot for hookers since they shuttered the sex services
section years ago (and most went to backpages and other sites)

Wonder what backpages will do, that's their whole business (google city +
backpages = first hit is escort listing on backpages)

~~~
throwaway76543
It's much larger than just "casual encounters". Craigslist has shut down every
single one of their personal categories. w4w, m4m, w4m, m4w are all gone. Even
"strictly platonic" is gone.

~~~
telchar
Missed Connections remains. All the solicitation will move there in a thinly
veiled manner, most likely.

~~~
AJ007
One could see a scenario where Craigslist has to shut down in its entirety.

~~~
throwaway76543
Yes, creating liability traps might undermine Craigslist entirely.

Imagine if a similar liability were created around regulating job postings or
apartment rentals, where Craigslist derives its revenue.

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crawfordcomeaux
I'm not hip to the qualities of IPFS, but isn't there a decentralized and
anonymous way to enable this? Or is that not yet a solved problem?

~~~
avhon1
IPFS is decentralized, but not anonymous.

Retroshare, Freenet, and I2P are all decentralized and anonymous, but they're
all somewhat difficult to use, and often very slow.

[http://retroshare.net/](http://retroshare.net/)

[https://freenetproject.org/](https://freenetproject.org/)

[https://geti2p.net/en/](https://geti2p.net/en/)

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imroot
Like most other banned communities on reddit, they just moved to other places,
it seems:

[https://www.reddit.com/r/SugarBaby/](https://www.reddit.com/r/SugarBaby/)

In a way, I'm not really surprised.

~~~
purple-again
This strategy doesn't work in the long run. The ban hammer came down swift on
purpose. Only a fraction of Sugar Daddy's users will find their way to Sugar
Baby and when the hammer comes down there as well, only a fraction of the
community will move to the next one.

Someone on HN has a link to a real nice data guy that is hosting JSON of every
Reddit (and HN!) comment ever made (or retrievable at least). If it was
important enough to you, you could verify this with the recent fatpeoplehate
fiasco.

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jacquesm
What was that about freedom of speech again?

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gandutraveler
And we can't do shit about Trump and his encounters with sex workers.

Anyways, does anyone know if blockchaim based forums like steemit are affected
by FOSTA?

