
Farewell to Craigslist's personals section, an artifact of an older, weirder web - rbanffy
https://slate.com/technology/2018/03/farewell-to-craigslists-personals-section-an-artifact-of-the-older-weirder-more-sordid-web.html
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SN76477
This is a terrible situation for the internet in America.

Lawmakers are simply blind to facts and only want to feed their own egos it
seems.

This law is created to curb sexploitation but it will only drive it more
underground.

I am convinced that crime has a role in society and a certain level of crime
must be tolerated so keep our freedom.

~~~
DanBC
> and a certain level of crime must be tolerated so keep our freedom.

Children were being kidnapped. They were being forced to take drugs. They were
then being raped. The rapists paid the abductors cash.

The kidnappers openly advertised children for rape in Backpage.

Once some of those children escaped they saw that their images, of them being
raped, were still used to sell sex in Backpage.

They contacted Backpage and asked for i) those images to be taken down and ii)
for Backpage to stop selling advertising to people who kidnap children and
rape them.

Backpage refused. Backpage forced these children to go all the way to the
highest courts in the US, because Backpage wanted to defend their "first
amendment right" to advertise a service - kidnapped drugged children for
paedophiles to rape.

When Backpage lost some of the court cases they put in filters so the
advertisers couldn't be quite so blatant. But Backpage also told the
advertisers how to evade those filters. "Use words like 'Amber Alert'" they
said. Here's what Amber Alert means:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AMBER_Alert](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AMBER_Alert)

> certain level of crime must be tolerated so keep our freedom.

Do you still think this?

~~~
jessewmc
I don't think you're responding to the point. The point is that speech--
methods of communication--are being restricted here, which hurts legitimate
users and does not prevent anyone from performing these heinous acts.

The whole point of speech protections is that you have to allow people to say
things you don't want them to say in order to protect the things you do want
to be said.

Going after the speech here is a pandering waste of time that infringes on
fundamental rights. The actual crimes here are what need to be chased after.

And the parent's point is a strong one -- why would you discourage criminals
from using an open communication medium?? If we can't stop these people when
they communicate openly how on earth are we going to do so if we drive them
underground? Enforcement, police resources, whatever you want to call it is
the issue here. Pushing the communication out of sight and pretending
something has been done about the problem is the complete opposite of a
solution, it makes people feel like something has been done while making the
problem less visible and no more solved.

~~~
empath75
Commercial speech has always been regulated in the us.

~~~
vageli
I think it could be reasonably argued that a personals ad is not commercial
speech.

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spunker540
This is the first I’m hearing of this law, but is the point that platforms are
now responsible for policing whatever content they host? Does craigslist just
not want to take on the burden of ensuring there’s no sex trafficking on its
personals site?

On the one hand that seems fair- but suppose craigslist is doing all it can to
police its site, at a certain point criminals can outsmart them by using
secret codes or other less obvious subversion tactics. At what point is it
clear that a website is doing enough to police itself that it won’t be liable
for criminals who are going to great lengths to outsmart them?

~~~
citizenkeen
As I understand it, that's the problem: there's no "enough" self policing. If
your site is home to sex trafficking, you're liable.

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ivanhoe
I find this 'new' web far more weirder, but it's probably just me...

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pasbesoin
People need to think forward: When Musk's satellite network gets going, what
laws/rules are going to govern it?

I know I don't particularly want individual nation states putting their stamp
all over that.

Some people have been saying: You need control of the physical layer.

We're about to get a new physical layer. How do we want that run?

~~~
djrogers
It’ll be handled the same way it is now. The services you access through the
satellites will be the same as they are now, and regulated by the same laws.

Unless you plan to launch all of your servers into space as well, a new
physical layer does t make any difference.

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S_A_P
I dont think that this is the way to curb sex trafficking nor do I agree with
this decision, but I think most people would agree that 99% of the "personals"
activity was ads for sex workers. If this is legitimate consenting adults
partaking that is their business. Here in Houston, however, there _is_ a
problem with sex trafficking. I dont think this will fix it, but I dont know
that it will make it worse either.

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gjvc
Still open for Craigslist cities outside the USA.

~~~
ChuckMcM
So I guess there is a market opportunity for a small nation to create 25
"cities" named "Los Angeles", "New York", "Chicago", "San Francisco", ... so
that people can run personal ads in the city of their choice. Sort of a
'mirror country' :-). Add in a VOIP provider that lets you provide country
phone numbers that re-direct to US numbers and voila, your first "portal
country" as a way to hack US internet law.

