
Stamping Out Online Sex Trafficking May Have Pushed It Underground - vanusa
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/17/technology/fosta-sex-trafficking-law.html
======
a483838
As someone who spent over a decade in the adult industry BackPage was
extremely responsible. They had a staff of 70 people dedicated to reporting
suspicious ads to police. They were the #1 source of trafficking tips.

Another socially responsible escort ad site was owned by a woman (former sex
worker) and was forced to sell to a very shady eastern european gentlemen who
is referred to as the trafficking king of europe. She sold because she didn’t
want to go to jail.

~~~
catalogia
> _Another socially responsible escort ad site was owned by a woman (former
> sex worker) and was forced to sell to a very shady eastern european
> gentlemen who is referred to as the trafficking king of europe. She sold
> because she didn’t want to go to jail._

Was shutting it down somehow not an option? Better to shut it down than to
give it to a gangster.

~~~
jessaustin
Parent says she didn't want to go to jail. Do you know her preferences better?
ISTM most people don't want to go to jail.

~~~
catalogia
It seems to me that the legal trouble would have come from continuing to
operate the site, and by selling the site instead of deleting the database and
shutting it down, she sold out those women.

But supposing she was being threatened with imprisonment unless she sold it,
biting that bullet would have been the honorable thing to do. She owed that
much to the people who trusted her with data of that nature.

~~~
jessaustin
A person in the situation described above is dealing with corrupt and
capricious police and prosecutors. Honest cops would have just charged her and
asked the courts to shut her down, if they really felt she had broken laws.

------
burnte
Noooooo! When I ehard about backpage being shut down because it was the
biggest place for child sex trafficking, I said it was the dumbest move they
could make. You have a website with the vast majority of illegal sex
traffickers COMING TO YOU, and you close it? Why? Make BP a deal, give the FBI
an office to scan everything so they can go after child sex traffickers, and
you can stay open. We'd have arrested thousands of them by now.

~~~
ryacko
If you can't speak English to the prostitute or she seems afraid, it would be
a suspicious situation.

"child sex traffickers"

I don't know where you get that from.

~~~
burnte
It was one of the big reasons the gov't claimed they shut it down.
[https://u.osu.edu/osuhtblog/2018/04/17/backpage-com-and-
chil...](https://u.osu.edu/osuhtblog/2018/04/17/backpage-com-and-child-sex-
trafficking/)

~~~
jandrese
Didn't that turn out to be bullshit though?

~~~
burnte
Even so, it's a dumb reason when the alternative is to keep it going as a
trap.

~~~
josinalvo
It is dumb if you want to protect people.

Not so dumb when the goal is to look tough and win votes...

------
abstractbarista
Its so simple for me. Just like with weed....

Legalize it!

Why are we concerning ourselves with how people pleasure themselves in
private? It's disgusting.

Of course, have law enforcement root out the kiddie stuff, and have a legal
framework to ensure safety (STI testing, etc) but my goodness, the efforts we
currently go through to catch consenting adults in mutual benefit...

~~~
codingdave
Sex trafficking is not consenting adults. There is a significant difference
between a sex worker who voluntarily engages in their profession vs. people
who are forced into it.

~~~
shams93
If you legalize it you can arrest the human traffickers while enabling
professional sex workers to be professionals just look at the enlightened
approach to the problem taken by Australia. No brothels allowed and no pimps
but independent sex work is legal.

~~~
fw_double_e
so you're advocating for regulatory capture? That'll go just like the legal
pot industry; prohibitively expensive licensing that only goes to the already
big players in the game.

~~~
Fjolsvith
Except the sex industry isn't at all as scalable as the pot industry. You
can't grow a field of ass and sell it yourself.

Plus, the cost of entry is pretty low, I hear.

~~~
yters
Robot sex will be the next big thing.

~~~
Koshkin
Nah.. VR will do just fine.

------
jrochkind1
You mean exactly how sex workers said it would, but nobody listened to them,
because it was never actually about protecting sex workers or victims of sex
trafficking?

[https://www.huffpost.com/entry/sex-workers-bill-fosta-
sesta_...](https://www.huffpost.com/entry/sex-workers-bill-fosta-
sesta_n_5aa1924fe4b04c33cb6cecb2)

[https://medium.com/voices/while-america-gawks-at-stormy-
dani...](https://medium.com/voices/while-america-gawks-at-stormy-daniels-a-
bipartisan-bill-will-lead-to-further-victimization-of-sex-8e5ef184f5ef)

~~~
paulgb
It was so infuriating to watch Democrats willingly get played by the religious
right into supporting something that was so blatantly designed to legislate
morality rather than actually help victims of trafficking. Glad that elected
officials are now rethinking it, at least.

~~~
Thorentis
> designed to legislate morality

Like... almost all other laws?

Do you think murder is immoral? Well guess what? There's a law for that. Just
because you disagree with the morality being legislated, you can't pretend
that "legislating morality" is the problem.

~~~
Doxin
Making murder illegal _should be_ mainly about preventing people from being
the victim of murder. Whether or not murder is moral or not shouldn't really
be relevant. We've decided that people have a right to not be murdered for
whatever reason. The only thing the law should then be concerned about is how
to prevent murder.

Using the same reasoning to outlaw prostitution is harder. Sure you could
argue people have a right to not be a prostitute -- and I heartily agree with
that -- but then the job of the law is to prevent people from being
prostitutes _against their will_. All outlawing prostitution outright does is
hide it from view. It doesn't help people get the rights they deserve. In fact
it takes away the right to be a prostitute if you want to. The only line of
arguing that prostitution should be illegal is either because we should outlaw
anything we deem immoral, or because somehow concocted a right that prevents
people from doing what they _want_ to do.

In my opinion the basis for any system of law _ought_ to be that people can do
what they want to. The only exceptions being when doing so infringes on the
right of others. I should be free to be a prostitute. I should not be free to
force other people to be prostitutes against their will. I should be free to
wildly swing my arms. I should not be free to punch someone in the face.

Of course everyone has their own opinion of what the law _should_ be and so we
end up with a patchwork of intentions -- let alone how the law actually gets
applied. That's fine. People are free to have opinions.

Either laws are written based on morality, or laws are written based on
rights. You can't have both without being inconsistent.

~~~
capitol_
> prevent people from being prostitutes against their will

The important part here is if you include economic factors into "against their
will" or not.

~~~
jessaustin
Do those factors have the same meaning when someone would rather not be e.g. a
cleaner or an orderly at a nursing home? Those jobs are physical and not so
pleasant. They pay much less than prostitution. Yet, many people are so
employed.

~~~
arnoooooo
Prostitution is still about selling what is most intimate, not really the
same.

Also, how are we supposed to reach gender equality if one gender's body is for
sale as a matter of routine ?

Note that I still agree with your point on being a cleaner, that's why I think
universal income is a good idea.

~~~
jandrese
Coal miners sell their body for their job too. There are plenty of jobs that
will destroy your body but pay better than average for your skill level.

At the end of the day when an adult makes the decision to do a particular job
because it pays better than the alternative we can't automatically count them
as a "victim". It robs people of their agency and infantilizes them.

------
jseliger
I just wrote this, in reply to an essay about _The Irishman_
[https://jakeseliger.com/2019/12/18/links-lessons-to-
unlearn-...](https://jakeseliger.com/2019/12/18/links-lessons-to-unlearn-
carbon-capture-and-storage-status-and-signaling-and-more) :

 _“The lonesome Irishman.” On the movie_ The Irishman _; the essay almost
makes me want to watch it, but not quite enough, because I feel like I’ve seen
enough mob movies. After The Sopranos, Goodfellas, The Godfather, and probably
some more, plus reading Diego Gambetta’s Codes of the Underworld: How
Criminals Communicate, I think that universe is pretty played out. Killing
people is also bad. Many of the things that thrive in the underworld should be
legalized, like gambling has been and marijuana is being. If gambling,
prostitution, and most non-opioid drugs are legal, there’s not much left for
the mob to do, and it will be starved of revenue, because most activities are
best done using conventional means and corporate or legal structures._

We've seen gambling move from being illegal to being conducted by the state
(lottos) or sanctioned and taxed by it. Marijuana is moving in the same
direction. Certain other things, we should probably be seeing move that way
too.

~~~
np_tedious
Why shouldn't opiods be legal? Sure, they are bad. But so is tobacco. Most
overdoses happen precisely because of unstable dosages or unexpected fentanyl.

~~~
jm__87
I think you need to balance the risks of addiction and negative health
consequences against the cost of having gangs/cartels profiting off of the
fact that the substance is controlled. With marijuana, it is neither very
addictive nor are the health consequences of using marijuana very severe, at
least in the short term. Legalization is a bit of a no brainer for marijuana.

Opioids are at the other end of the spectrum - they are highly addictive and
aside from the possibility of accidental overdose, even just using them at the
correct dosage carries a lot of negative health consequences. It is not clear
that you get a net win for society by legalizing opioids.

~~~
M2Ys4U
Decriminalisation (as opposed to legalisation) is a good step, though. Remove
the jeopardy from seeking help from healthcare professionals and the state.

Keep the supply of the substances illegal, but provide safe places - staffed
with medics - where people can have their drugs tested, take the drugs in as
safe a way as possible and be signposted to rehab and recovery services,
including mental health services.

------
bdhdbbdbdjdns
As an occasional consumer of sex work, here is the reality: yes, It’s more
dangerous now for both parties, but much more so for the women. The labor
supply has gone down sharply because the economics went upside down. If you
can’t count on as many clients per day the fixed cost of the hotel room
becomes harder to risk so many girls exited the market. Prices have gone up
sharply. The kind of girls that were charging $250-300 are now charging
$400-500. “Trafficking” is an almost nonexistent issue at these price points
where I dabble but as I understand is depressingly common on the low end of
the market where people are picking up girls on the street for $20 blow jobs.
Those girls are now more vulnerable than ever because with the smaller size of
the marketplace they need pimps, madams, agencies, etc. to help them get
enough work.

~~~
overcast
Just to satisfy my own curiosity, what is your use case for paying for sex?
Married? High powered executive? I can't imagine paying for something that is
easily free on a million different dating apps.

~~~
jandrese
Not to be too mean here, but perhaps the OP doesn't have an easy time finding
willing partners in the traditional dating scene. Maybe they have the kind of
look that makes women swipe left.

~~~
overcast
It's possible, but in my experience, there is someone for everyone. I suppose
if the goal is to hit way above your weight, paying makes sense. Money does
seem to have that effect on women. But if you have that much, you should be
able to pull it easily without prostitution?

~~~
colmvp
> It's possible, but in my experience, there is someone for everyone.

lol citation needed.

I've used dating apps for the last four years. I've gotten maybe 3-4 dates per
year, and 0 relationships out of it.

~~~
overcast
Please take this as friendly. It sounds like maybe you're setting your
expectations too high, and not giving other women a chance. In my experience
women take what you write in your profile seriously. Spend what you would
consider an inordinate amount of time perfecting it, like you would a resume
for big job prospect. Get great photos taken of yourself, this doesn't require
money or a professional service. Find good light, take lots, use the best of
them. Grainy, poorly lit, unflattering photos will be dismissed quickly. Don't
make them all selfies. You want to show off your best features, and what makes
you, well you.

But seriously, work on what you say in your profile. Nearly every response I
get from a woman, is about how well my profile is written.

~~~
Mirioron
You still need to be somewhat attractive for all of this to matter. Not
everyone is.

~~~
n0rbwah
Not really a serious advice but there it is: if you can fix some of it with
some light photoshopping, do it.

Plenty of women do it too and for many of them it's not at all light.

Think of it as polishing your CV by omitting some embarrassing stuff and
putting forwards the things you want. Your goal shouldn't be to be 100% honest
when writing your profile/CV. Just to make it enticing enough to get your foot
in the door.

------
istjohn
There is a debate as to whether or not legalizing prostitution exacerbates sex
slavery by creating a market for prostitution that willing market participants
are unable to fill. This author[1] points out that studies on this question
use the term "sex trafficking" which can mean either illegal immigration of
willing sex workers or sex slavery. That distinction seems important, but is
often not clarified by investigators.

I think this issue is vexing because there are so many groups with different
compelling reasons to favor or oppose prohibition. The below list is obviously
a gross over-simplification, but I think it captures the largest forces in the
debate.

FOR: Men. Men would benefit from legalization in the obvious way.

AGAINST: Women. Women stand to lose if their partners are tempted by legal
prostitution.

FOR: Sex workers. Sex workers would benefit in the obvious way.

AGAINST: Religious groups. They lost the battle against pornography, but
they're winning this one.

AGAINST: Feminists. Not all feminists, but many feminists believe sex work is
exploitation by definition. [2]

Each group has powerful motivations completely independent from the effect of
legalization on sex slavery.

1\. [https://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2013/06/15/legal-
pr...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2013/06/15/legal-prostitution-
and-sex-trafficking-from-the-annals-of-bad-economic-research/)

2\.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feminist_views_on_prostitution](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feminist_views_on_prostitution)

~~~
heydabop
> AGAINST: Women. Women stand to lose if their partners are tempted by legal
> prostitution.

If someone's partner is gonna be tempted away simply by legal prostitution,
maybe they aren't the most faithful to begin with.

~~~
istjohn
I suppose it depends on whether you're more concerned with your partner's
character in an abstract way or you're more concerned about actual infidelity.

~~~
heydabop
Actual infidelity seems inevitable if the only thing preventing it is
inability to find someone to have sex with.

~~~
DuskStar
Sure, but that might be the difference between 2 years and 30.

"Inevitable either way" doesn't mean that the needle stands still.

~~~
lstodd
More like 2 and 30 weeks in this particular case.

------
nullifidian
It's important to note that whenever trafficking is discussed , in 95% of
cases it's going to be about consensual prostitution between adults. Anti-sex
activists have been successful at attacking the vocabulary.

"But anti-prostitution activists like Hughes often use “sexual exploitation”
to include any kind of prostitution or sex work—in fact, Hughes insists in her
article that "trafficking occurs even if the woman consents.” "

[https://newrepublic.com/article/123302/human-trafficking-
has...](https://newrepublic.com/article/123302/human-trafficking-has-become-
meaningless-term)

~~~
pergadad
95% seems like an awfully wrong guess. There is a lot of forced prostitution,
then a huge great area of those that for various reasons have no other option
(from abusive boyfriend to immigration status to economic factors) and then a
very small crust of voluntary sex workers, mostly at the high-end of the
market. The ratio between these three will vary massively between
country/region/city but in any case it is often difficult to identify who is
victim and who is voluntary because the world is complex. (Are the African
ladies prostituting themselves in Italy doing so voluntarily when they are
afraid of voodoo curses? Is the meth addict doing it voluntarily? Is the girl
that can't afford her daughter's diabetes medication by any other 'job' doing
so voluntarily?)

~~~
olau
Could you cite sources for these claims?

The numbers I've seen are opposite to what you claim, and seemed to indicate
that a lot of the "trafficking" is actually people traveling to another
country for a while to earn (relatively) easy money without risking getting
stigmatized by people they know.

You can see sort of the same thing play out without the stigmatization with
carpenters and similar coming from low-wage countries. They'll generally have
worse working conditions than local carpenters (if for nothing else being away
from their families), but still come for the opportunities.

I do think the stigmatization makes it a difficult subject.

~~~
a483838
As someone who spent 10 years in the business trafficking is indeed rare. In
my experience it is mostly through organized crime in LA, SF, and NYC.

Almost all Asian AAMPs are trafficked women. They are snuck in on ships and
forced to work to pay their “debt”.

Outside of this women work in prostitution because they need money. A lot of
people demonize this work saying how terrible it is, but the reality is an
hours work is a days wages at a normal job. That’s very tempting.

Internet ads and online advertising got women off the streets and made things
incredibly safer. Women could focus on screening clients instead of attracting
them, increasing safety.

------
aussieguy1234
As the article says, lots of sites in a mad panic did a purge of sex and
dating related content since SESTA/FOSTA was passed.

I've launched Libr, which won't be doing any such purge. It was built as a
replacement for Tumblr. I'm in Australia, SESTA/FOSTA is an American law.

[https://librapp.com](https://librapp.com)

~~~
jessaustin
Will you have American customers? If so, how will they pay you?

~~~
aussieguy1234
There are already American users, but they're not paying anything for the
service. I don't have ads yet.

------
0_____0
Hah! No shit. I live in a neighborhood with a lot of steet prostitution. One
night I was smoking a cigarette on my porch when a girl who was working that
night popped out from behind a car, walked over and asked if I had a smoke,
and I obliged her.

Apparently she was ducking a guy who had asked for services she wasn't
comfortable with, and when they started to argue, she got out. He started to
get out and then reached for something, and she booked it.

I asked her if she had seen changes since the passage of SESTA/FOSTA, which
she wasn't aware of. She did tell me that the neighbors on the main drag
wanted Backpage and the like back, because there had been a significant uptick
in street prostitution.

~~~
dmix
FOSTA didn't actually take down Backpage, it's a common myth they were
connected. The investigation into Backpage stated well before FOSTA ever
existed and they just used the timing of taking down Backpage to announce the
release of FOSTA, which resulted in the public perception they were related.

Street prostitution is actually very rare these days compared to the past and
it's mostly just the last remaining bottom-of-the-barrel stuff by the
community that is connected to the homeless/junkie scene that's in every city.
A minor niche in an otherwise large grey/black market.

95%+ of escorting is still all online and the 'noble' fight to bring Backpage
down to protect 'human trafficking' only forced more less technically literate
women to engage in this backwards and far more dangerous method of marketing,
which was otherwise quickly on its way dying out (there will always be some
diehards to stick to the streets), protecting women by giving them a venue to
request IDs and verify people through shared blacklists of bad-actors, and
helping clean up communities.

The sites also making the polices job catching guys looking for minors way
easier since they could just set up some ads from the office and catch 100
guys at a time who egregiously and explicitly ask for young girls.

There's still plenty of other grey-market websites and forums that quickly
replaced Backpage for this sort of thing and there will always continue to be,
just like piracy sites playing whack-a-mole.

Regardless of FOSTA it will be a constant problem for LEO to try to take them
down and instead of having a few big sites to monitor the bad guys, they'll
exist in shadier forms. And just like drugs, protecting women and preventing
actual human trafficking will go to the wayside of punishing websites and
workers for something that will never meaningfully go away.

The solution just like drugs in better prevention and regulation of these
sites and of sex-work itself and ignoring the "think of the children"
hysteria.

One of the biggest problems is that sex worker activists are naively extremely
hostile to any attempts to legalize and regulate the industry. They think they
can get it decriminalized and maintain a complete hostility to working with
government oversight (ie mandatory testing), courts, and working with police,
which is not how any safe, stable industries works. Just like how it was
impractical for pro-marijuana groups to except decriminalization in Canada.
They'd get this along a lot further if they just accepted this reality.

------
rolltiide
I prefer Germany, Austria and Switzerland's model.

Its not a panacea in preventing trafficking but for the workers that want to
be there it doesn't criminalize them, and the market for establishments are
pretty competitive and great for patrons. Game of Thrones can't even compare,
while many tourists corral themselves over to one street in Amsterdam due to
its marketing campaign even though there are whole countries that are way more
awesome.

The std testing is the most attractive part of these systems. "Tolerant" and
"Decriminalized" places do not have the capability of offering that. Let alone
everywhere that outrights criminalizes workers and/or Johns.

I think the population health should be a prong that is weighed heavier.
Regulated systems do that. If there is any coercion of the sex workers then
spend resources enforcing that and providing avenues just like anybody else in
a domestic abuse relationship.

~~~
k__
As far as I know the problem here in Germany is legalization.

They could simply have decriminalized prostitution and leave procuration
illegal, but no, they had to throw around with laws to make the live of sex-
workers harder.

~~~
3131s
Why is that making sex workers lives harder?

~~~
k__
If they have to follow more laws, their work gets harder.

If prostitution was just decriminalized, their work would just have been
easier, it would have been a normal job like every other job.

~~~
rolltiide
"Just decriminalized" means there is no confidence or way to assume that the
sex workers are routinely tested. Pass.

As a sidenote, this reminds me of another reason why criminalization is a
waste of time as it only ensnares the poor or impatient, while an even
distribution of the more privileged ones of us engage in the exact same
behaviors but where it is legal, remaining upstanding citizens by every
metric.

------
paggle
“Stamping out” anything moves it underground. The transaction volume almost
always goes down and the risk for those remaining in the market almost always
goes up.

~~~
jillesvangurp
In the same way the war on drugs had a lot of casualties (and collateral
damage) and did absolutely nothing to reduce drug usage.

Prostitution is called the oldest profession in the world for a reason. It has
always existed, in all countries, cultures, etc.

IMHO legalized prostitution with some sane policies for health and safety
combined with a threat of prosecution for 'customers' of victims of human
trafficking (e.g. for rape, because that's what that is) would do wonders to
clean that business up. A blanket ban just drives women in the hands of
criminals.

------
Iv
What is sad is that there are a lot of real-size social experiments in various
countries that have a variety of legislation and situation and a ton of
literature to guide policy there.

I have (like everybody) some opinions on how sex should work and what limits
paid sex should have. I'll just say that: My preferences are totally
irrelevant and should be dismissed if they have any chance of increasing human
trafficking.

These policies should have a single, fact-based, evidence-based goal: fight
sex slavery and human trafficking. If it leads to a system I don't like, so be
it. Fighting slavery is the #1 goal there.

~~~
boomboomsubban
Then put everyone under 24 hour surveillance. That is the only logical choice
given your goals. If you allow someone any amount of freedom, you can't be
sure they won't used it this try and enslave someone else.

~~~
geofft
That's clearly not what the comment you're replying to was saying.

It was saying, I might have my moral opinions in a vacuum about whether
prostitution is good or bad, but the moral principle of trafficking being bad
overrides that, and we should follow what the evidence says. If the evidence
says that decriminalizing sex work reduces trafficking, then a moral opinion
against sex work doesn't outweigh the evidence.

It was clearly not about higher moral principle of fundamental liberty.

~~~
DuskStar
The "higher moral principle of fundamental liberty" is choosing the more
free/less restrictive path _even when that leads to worse outcomes_.

That's _literally_ the idea behind the entire liberty vs freedom discussion -
that (for instance) _even if_ giving the government access to all our
communications would make us safer, _it 's still not what should be done_.

------
thrower123
You'd think that we might have learned by now that if you try to vigorously
suppress something that people want, this sort of thing happens.

------
Zak
It doesn't seem to me that this result should have been difficult to predict.
Some people did, of course, but neither politicians nor the mainstream press
seemed to give the argument much consideration.

There's even evidence suggesting that backpage.com was effectively railroaded,
and actively aided law enforcement in identifying and prosecuting pimps and
child abusers (this source has a known libertarian political bias):

[https://reason.com/2019/08/26/secret-memos-show-the-
governme...](https://reason.com/2019/08/26/secret-memos-show-the-government-
has-been-lying-about-backpage/)

------
boomboomsubban
The only part of this article that can be considered "news" is that two
presidential candidates support doing a study on the bill's effects.
Everything else is the same as the articles written before it passed.

What prompted reprinting this article without actually doing any investigation
into the ramifications?

~~~
di4na
A law proposal to make a study of the impact.

------
istjohn
[https://archive.md/iTRDs](https://archive.md/iTRDs)

------
yters
Stamping out murder only has pushed it underground! Stamping out rape has only
pushed it underground! Stamping out kidnapping has only pushed it underground!
I long for the day all of these practices can be legalized and done safely and
in the open!

~~~
tenebrisalietum
Truly voluntary prostitution isn't the same as murder, rape, or kidnapping.

People have to work to survive. Some people make so little at work that if
they lost that job, they'd be homeless or suffer other harm. And, most people
would rather not be at work. Companies often provide this work.

Are workers slaves? Are companies exploiting workers?

If that type of worker-company relationship is morally permissible, then on
some level prostitution has to be as well.

~~~
abfan1127
the metric I use is mutually consenting? Do both parties consent to the
agreement? Then it should be legal. Do I consent to trade XXX for YYY with a
company or other individual? Does the company/individual consent to trade YYY
for XXX?

I don't consent to murder, rape, or kidnapping of myself, nor do I consent to
do those to others.

~~~
tenebrisalietum
Unfortunately this doesn't take into account some nuances. For example: A
homeless, jobless woman who engages in acts of prostitution simply to eat is
consenting technically, but most would say this situation shouldn't exist. But
marriages do happen all the time for economic reasons...

~~~
abfan1127
Shouldn't exist? If its really her only option, who are you (or anyone else)
to take it away? Unless its not really her only option, then who are you to
take away her choice?

~~~
tenebrisalietum
What I am saying is X really a choice if the alternative to choosing X is
suffering harm, such as starvation, lack of shelter, etc.

------
fallingfrog
I mean that was the intention, was it not? A full discussion of our incoherent
approach to work, sex, sex work, morality, patriarchal power dynamics, and so
forth is out of scope here but it was never about making material improvements
to anybody’s life.

------
dzonga
the reason, backpage was shut down is that the gvt couldn't get a cut. and
like all activities that are morally, grey. once the gvt stops getting their
cut, they will scoop in. it's just the same, way the mafia is allowed to
operate unions etc and once they ruffle feathers and stop contributing to
politicians then all of a sudden the mafia is running a racket. Yet the gvt
runs the biggest racket, protection scheme. so yeah, now all the SW are back
on the streets or in the hands of pimps. Also the backpage era, due to supply
and demand markets efficiencies, seems SW had become a safe sustainable,
decent livelihood for many.

~~~
stevenicr
I believe it was shutdown not because they didn't get a cut, but because they
were the perfect boogeyman to create a large cut of other pies.

From 'im a do-gooder' message in campaign ads, to raising money from church
groups - backpage was popular enough for just about everyone to have known
about it, and many people likely to have an associate that actually uses it..

from Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart, and all of his free press coverage (free
campaign money) - to others. I believe Kamalla Hariz, Marcha Blakbern, and
others used the backpage boogeyman as a springboard to capture free press,
free exposure, and drum up free campaign money.

Sadly many of those the used the victory lap of the shutdown got lots of
exposure for the occurrence and the various roles they may have played - yet
the same outlets that pushed those stories have been remaining silent on the
exposure of the shady investigative work, and the truths of the case like
showing that most the investigators knew backpage was actively helping them
take out child workers.

It seems the political grandstanding and free capitol from the exposure and
donations outweighed keeping a popular tool that was used by many
investigators to separate the kids from the adults and the forced from the
free willing.

The boogeyman in AZ in now porn in general and cell phones I think? Some kind
of forced tax to unlock porn on your device, enforced by the phone companies?

~~~
busterarm
The reason Backpage got shut down is because the owners pissed off Cindy and
John McCain with negative reporting in the Phoenix New Times and large
donations against them. Everything else is just excuses.

------
ilaksh
I hope people will consider the idea that UBI could factor into this type of
discussion.

------
StuffedParrot
You don’t pass conservative legislation like this to reduce fear of crime.

------
seibelj
Libertarians were way ahead of the curve on drug legalization, criminal
justice reform, school choice, and police brutality to name recent victories.
We have been banging the drum on legalizing sex work for decades, and I'm
optimistic that true freedom for consenting adults will continue to win over
the 'Controllers of Lives' that want to ban freedom.

There is nothing wrong with two consenting adults choosing to have sexual
relations for monetary exchange, and I care nothing about "downsides" that
come from legalization. It's morally imperative that we allow freedom, then
deal with the consequences. Otherwise, we should just ban alcohol, driving,
having kids, or anything that can _potentially_ have negative effects when we
allow people to be free and make their own decisions.

------
par
uhhh ya think?

------
otabdeveloper4
> "stamping out murder may have pushed it underground"

Okay, and how is that a bad thing?

~~~
praptak
If the end effect is greater body count then yes, it is a bad thing.

------
notjtrig
For real though, in my world, the other America, ‘online sex trafficking’ is
alive and well. Apps are blowing up with whores, they literally offering
subscription services now.

E-Thot is the word of the year, all these money sending apps that came out
recently are capitalizing on a new thriving market with blurred lines as to
what is legal.

------
viburnum
Where prostitution has been completely legalized there’s been a huge increase
in demand, and the market has responded not with an increase in wages for sex
workers but with an increase in slavery. In practice the least-bad policy
seems to be legal/decriminalized to sell but illegal to buy.

~~~
55555
Why should it be illegal for customers to pay for prostitution? Why do you
feel prostitutes are entitled to above-market wages?

~~~
istjohn
Their contention is that legal sex work creates a market that incentivises sex
trafficking, in which case it should be illegal to protect women from being
victimized.

~~~
edflsafoiewq
Can male sex workers be legalized then?

------
hiram112
I think the most unmentioned facet regarding prostitution is that for many
men, prostitution may be the only way for them to obtain sex, which I feel is
just as much of a "right" as is the right for women to obtain an abortion.

No I don't believe taxpayers should be required to pay for prostitutes, nor
for abortions.

But the market for both should be decriminalized. Not only is this something
that is morally right, though I'm sure feminists especially will not agree, I
believe this is in society's best interest, too.

There are more and more studies showing most men did not actually propagate
throughout history, and this is also true with many other mammals. The alpha
obtains a harem, and the rest fight over what's left (or die trying).

I have a feeling that the institution of monogamy came about in almost all
cultures simply to avoid the problems associated with large numbers of males,
programmed by evolution to do one thing, unable to obtain it.

Inexpensive and shameless prostitution might be an alternative as it seems
monogamy is declining, and some version of polygamy becoming more normal with
few men sharing many women (if you believe the online dating app stats and
lots of anecdotes online).

~~~
Noos
No, it isn't the only way for many men to do so. The issue is that they don't
want to put in the time or effort to be the kind of man that can, and they
have radically unrealistic expectation of sex itself. No, you cannot bang a
supermodel, but you can find a woman who loves you and will be with you.

No, men don't have a right to sex, because it involves a woman surrendering
herself; its not something innate to the man that is being denied. It's dark
to make it so that women need to surrender themselves to strangers on demand
for cash because men have a right to the act, and that's just part of it. Sex
is really only healthy where there is mutual love and at least some level of
commitment; without it there is a huge lack of protection for the woman and it
becomes a banal experience for the man, because he cannot have love or
intimacy from it, just the act that becomes more and more extreme over time
precisely because its divorced from human sentiment.

honestly i wish dang would ban these kinds of topics because we usually only
get one side of them based on sort of an inhuman libertarianism; there's no
"intellectual curiosity" about this, just sort of a repetition of a specific
set of views with very little attempt to challenge or provide the unpopular
side.

~~~
hiram112
> No, men don't have a right to sex,...

I would say men have a moral right to sex as much as women have a moral right
to not be physically and sexually abused by men, at least in an advanced human
society that we want.

Naturally, evolution has left the sexes in an unpleasant predicament - look at
higher mammals like chimps or great apes for the state we'd fall into without
our societal boundaries.

We're long past the point where we've 'artificially' propped up women to a
pedestal that wouldn't be obtainable without men raising them up - the freedom
to earn money regardless of actual production, safety against physical /
sexual violence which is only enforced by other men, reproduction rights, etc.

If this system is to sustain itself, a large amount of men will also need to
provided for, and that means sex (or maybe in a sci-fi future some sort of
drug or simulation that mimics it in the brain, and releases the 'pressure').
Otherwise, one side of our artificial society is no longer balanced.

>Sex is really only healthy where there is mutual love and at least some level
of commitment;

Sex itself is the goal for most men, at least primitively. The rest is just a
bonus.

> honestly i wish dang would ban these kinds of topics because we usually only
> get one side of them based on sort of an inhuman libertarianism;

Typical. You've been able to express you opinions. I've been able to express
mine. Censoring / banning speech is ridiculous, and should never be even
considered by a company like YC who owes quite a bit of debt to the US system,
which believes in free speech. If they want to start banning more and more
speech, they can go set up shop in China or the UK.

