
Fifty Women Say Salesforce Helped Sex Traffickers Exploit Them - petethomas
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-03-27/fifty-women-say-salesforce-helped-sex-traffickers-exploit-them
======
hajile
Should we also allow Microsoft to be sued for all the criminals that use
windows? Salesforce is a platform (albeit a horrible one I never want to work
with again) and provides services to whoever pays. Illegal actions are between
the local government and the user.

Criminals lie. They could claim to be a humanitarian company while
trafficking. The only way for Salesforce to know would be to manually
investigate all their stored data. Not only is that practically impossible,
but it would also ruin them. Business information is private.

Then again, in lots of jurisdictions today, a landlord can be held liable for
the tenant committing a crime. In these jurisdictions, if your tenant assaults
someone on your property, you can be liable for millions in compensation. This
is yet another way to drive former criminals back to crime. They aren't full
citizens. They can't get a job to get money. They can't get a loan to buy a
house. They can't even rent a place to stay because it's so risky. Since
they've been effectively "unperson-ed", their only choice is going back to
crime. At least if they're caught, they'll have food, healthcare, and a place
to stay.

Stupid laws are stupid. If person A is legally responsible for person B's
actions, they will necessarily start asserting control over person B's life.
We do this to kids under the idea that they are too ignorant to know better.
Why do we do this to mentally-capable adults? They are capable of independent
decisions. Hold them responsible for their actions. Quit forcing Landlords,
Salesforce, or whomever to play as parents and be legally responsible for
other adults.

~~~
will_brown
>Should we also allow Microsoft to be sued for all the criminals that use
windows?

If a company provides products/services to someone with the knowledge those
products/services will be used for a crime...then yes.

For example it’s legal for an arms dealer to sell a gun, but illegal to sell a
gun if the seller knows the gun is being purchased with the intent of being
used in a crime.

Here what you have is Salesforce who allegedly sold its products/services to
backpage knowing their software would specifically be used to facilitate
prostitution and human trafficking. Whereas you - for whatever reasons - seem
to be concluding salesforce had no way of knowing their products/services
would be used by backpage in the commission of a crime (ie your Windows
analogy). However, the facts suggest SalesForce was well aware of backpages
business practices and activities (and was publicly fighting against the same
criminal activity, while simultaneously supplying software that facilitated
the same). It’s a tough case but human slaves and a corporation privately
profiting from these activities while publicly “fighting” against the same
won’t play well to a jury.

~~~
JamesBarney
Craigslist also had an adult section. Should anyone who sold software to
Craigslist be held legally responsible as well?

~~~
will_brown
I can’t answer “if we should”...only as I explained above that under the law
what you describe isn’t enough on its own to create liability for the service
provide, the legal threshold is whether the seller knew the buyer would use
the good/service in commission of a crime.

So for example the power company who sold power to run backpage, could they be
liable? Probably not.

But a tech company who allegedly custom built a database to facilitate
backpages human trafficking/prostitution activities...maybe

~~~
JamesBarney
They custom built a database to facilitate an adult classifieds section. Which
on its face is not illegal, and the argument it was illegal was based on a
technicality related to filtering and word replacement that removed their safe
harbor protections. The owners themselves did not know this until the court
case was decided years later so it seems weird to presume that Salesforce
could know it.

------
milemi
Since it wasn't mentioned in the bloomberg article, whoever has been paying
attention knows that shutting down backpage has made sex workers less safe and
more dependent on pimps. Prostitution should be completely legal and brought
into the light, not pushed into the shadows.

~~~
nabnob
Full legalization increases trafficking and allows brothels, which are
basically pimps who are able to operate legally.
[http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/45198/1/Neumayer_Legalized_Prostitu...](http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/45198/1/Neumayer_Legalized_Prostitution_Increase_2012.pdf)

The Nordic Model - decriminalization of selling, with criminalization of
purchasing - protects sex workers from pimps and has been very successful in
the countries that have instituted it.

~~~
milemi
Human trafficking is just another word for illegal immigration. It just sounds
more sinister and it gives a way for anti-immigration folks to sound humane
and pretend like they care about the trafficked people, when they really care
about not letting them in. As long as you have inescapable poverty and
hardship in some countries, and no legal ways for people to get in, you'll
have human trafficking. The only way to stop it is to let people in. The
harder you try to ban it the worse it gets for the trafficked, but as I said,
their well being is not the true concern of anti-trafficking laws at all.

As for sex work, there's absolutely no good reason why it shouldn't be
completely destigmatized, decriminalized, and treated like any other kind of
work. There are some inherent risks, but if it's decriminalized they can be
managed and brought down to acceptable levels. There are certainly jobs with
higher inherent risks, like working in lumber, or oil rigs, or construction.
For women who aren't savvy enough to make it on their own, brothels are a good
solution. With decriminalization, the bosses in brothels can be kept
accountable.

~~~
dragonwriter
> Human trafficking is just another word for illegal immigration.

No, it's not, because human trafficking can occur without crossing an limited-
migration border.

As usually used, it's very close to the union of _de facto_ slavery and sex
work. (To be fair, those categories have significant overlap, but there's a
lot of push to include the parts of the latter that aren't the former within
the reach of of the term.)

~~~
milemi
You mean there are people being "human trafficked" in their countries of
origin? Can you provide an example?

~~~
dragonwriter
> You mean there are people being "human trafficked" in their countries of
> origin?

Yes; there are also people who are legal immigrants who are trafficked only
_after_ arriving legally (immigrants, even legal ones, are often a vulnerable
population.) And, even when illegal immigrants are trafficked, that is also
often post-arrival, not part of how they can immigrate.

> Can you provide an example?

The one that is most frequently features in media reports is domestic sex
trafficking of underage girls; but there is a lot more (surprisingly good
coverage of a lot of variations is found, for now, on Wikipedia's page on
trafficking in California [0], which is flagged for excessive detail.)

[0]
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_trafficking_in_Califor...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_trafficking_in_California)

------
thinkingkong
Seems like this would all boil down to knowledge and intent. I have no love
for salesforce but it seems like a big of a stretch to go after a tools
manufacturer.

~~~
LanceH
As a tools provider, sure, it makes no sense. But aren't they also a big
services company as well, like Oracle? Will there be some record of an
engagement on how to manage these particular pages?

And it would also be nice of "journalists" would differentiate between
prostitution and sex trafficking. The cops, of course, are using the most
inflammatory term possible to justify their actions.

~~~
save_ferris
> And it would also be nice of "journalists" would differentiate between
> prostitution and sex trafficking. The cops, of course, are using the most
> inflammatory term possible to justify their actions.

This is a civil suit, not criminal, brought by women who claimed they were
abused by traffickers, which was enabled by Salesforce.

I can't find a single reference to the police in this piece, and the article
clearly states that the plaintiffs allege trafficking in their case. So the
piece is exactly correct to use the term "trafficking".

------
superkuh
The entire 'sex trafficking' thing is a manufactured moral drama. It doesn't
actually exist at scale. All the large 'sex trafficking' courts set up a few
years ago have now closed due to lack of cases.

This is just the normal government/media cycle of using kids and/or sex in
order to pass laws (ie, FOSTA/SESTA) to violate the rights of individuals and
empower the state.

------
koboll
It's impossible to evaluate the legitimacy of this without more technical
details. "Providing customized database tools" could mean all sorts of things.

~~~
mcguire
Salesforce allegedly helped them with their "trafficker and pimp database".

On one hand, that's Salesforce doing their job well. On the other, seems like
they would know what's going on.

~~~
tomatotomato37
I mean, I doubt the criminals are using HUMAN_TRAFFIC_ROUTE and PIMP_QUOTA as
column names. Past a certain point the logistics of a criminal enterprise
looks just as generic as any other corp; It's kinda easy to see how Salesforce
could be fooled

------
olivermarks
Craigslist would have been shut down if they hadn't closed down their 'lonely
hearts' section. Backpage was essentially a craigslist clone right down to
look and feel and allowed prostitution advertising, which was the main
substance and content of that site until they were closed down.

This is another difficult free speech and enabling platform 'responsibility'
area which is easily exploitable by both criminals (human traffickers etc) and
exploiters of the law's grey areas (Those suing SalesForce). Like the Michael
Jackson accusers there is a danger that widely circulated accusations
presented as fact by the corporate media will greatly damage SalesForce's
credibility. huge sums of money as compensation/hush money are at stake and
there is much to gain and little to risk for accusers in the current climate.

~~~
GVIrish
To be clear, Backpage didn't get shut down for merely hosting prostitution
ads. They got shut down for actively editing ads featuring minors to remove
references to their age, money laundering, purposefully not reporting missing
and exploited children, and few other things that showed they were not just a
neutral party displaying ads.

~~~
olivermarks
[https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/local/arizona-
investiga...](https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/local/arizona-
investigations/2018/08/25/backpage-founders-prostitution-charges-settling-
scores-michael-lacey-james-larkin/1097236002/)

as always it's complicated when free speech issues are involved

------
redm
I think the lesson here, is that by putting themselves out there as a beacon
of equality and women's rights, Benioff has also made them a target for this
type of attack. In other words, no good deed goes unpunished. I'm sure there
were plenty of other vendors supporting Backpage.

------
vstuart
This 6* Min. clip (gender equality in the workplace) with Salesforce CEO Mark
Benioff is outstanding and apropos to this thread. Benioff is reassuringly
pro-equality (women's rights advocate).

[https://persagen.com/files/misc/benioff.mp4](https://persagen.com/files/misc/benioff.mp4)

\------------------------------

Aside: for the techies here, in 2016 Salesforce purchased (Richard Socher's)
MetaMind ... a superb group who continue to publish leading edge NLP/NLU
papers ...

[https://techcrunch.com/2016/04/04/saleforce-acquires-
metamin...](https://techcrunch.com/2016/04/04/saleforce-acquires-metamind/)

[https://www.recode.net/2016/4/4/11585854/salesforce-
acquisit...](https://www.recode.net/2016/4/4/11585854/salesforce-acquisition-
metamind-deep-learning)

Very forward-thinking.

------
gonational
PG&E could be in trouble...

First, that big Camp fire last year; now, if it turns out they’ve been
producing electricity that has been used by criminals... eek

------
mcguire
" _Starting in 2013, when Backpage’s growth stalled, Salesforce took on the
web portal as a client and provided tools to help manage its “trafficker and
pimp database,” resulting in Backpage’s resurgence, according to the
complaint. The lawsuit includes an order form billed to Backpage that’s dated
in December 2016._ "

------
zebnyc
Unless Salesforce was doing a custom deployment for them, this kind of
revisionism is a non-story IMHO.

Just to give context, I work at an adtech company and to be eligible to speak
to an account manager, the customer has to spend upwards of 10 grand a month.
Rest are self-served. We dropped Infowars as a customer `after` we got to know
that they had been a customer for a while.

Would not be surprised if Salesforce has similar tiers and has magnitude more
customers than we do.

------
knotdeven
Big data will be used to identify, track, isolate, and then indoctrinate the
most vulnerable members of society.

You will be shadow banned and gas lit into a pipeline that serves to supply
the insidious demands of those who see humans only as resources.

We coders will unwittingly(poorly compensated) or wittingly(well compensated)
algorithmically functionalize the pimp psychology and business practice into a
system of sinister use.

For now it's just immigrants driving cars and delivering food, but you might
guess what comes next.

~~~
calimac
Beautiful description of whats happening. Few can see what you describe
through their lense of bias and rationalization

~~~
knotdeven
There's an algorithm out there looking for girls who don't ever get phone
calls or texts from their dads...

------
pythonicraps
This is __very __different from Apple or Microsoft (assuming they had iphones
/ windows laptops), they are B2C and are not managing individual customer
relationships.

Salesforce is a B2B company and actively manages every relationship that they
have with every individual customer, because lots of their customers are
businesses that are willing to pay $10K/yr, $100k/yr or even $1M+/yr for their
cloud products (why? the world may never know).

This means that "Customer Success Managers" are constantly reaching out to
Salesforce's customers to up-sell them. Anyone who works with Salesforce knows
that the salesforce folks are constantly schmoozing their customers for an up-
sell.

This report shows that Backpage was no exception. So people at Salesforce were
emailing, calling, customizing software for, taking out to lunch and making
deals with a company selling child sex slaves online. They knew and took the
money anyways.

------
sperber2999
I am most certain SF had no idea what was going on, and while any form of
abuse is horrible it makes no sense accusing SF of helping in a crime where
it's impossible for SF to know. It's like blaming a lawn gnome maker for
somebody being beaten with a lawn gnome. Demanding SF monitors everything, or
Google monintors all mails, to prevent criminal activity is causing more
overall harm for society than those edge cases do. If not SF they could have
used every other CRM with ease, I suppose, but SF, Google et al turning into
the panopticon would harm everybody.

------
luxuryballs
evil people can use money for evil, does that make money evil and thus we
should avoid having money? then only evil people would have all the money

evil people can use guns for evil, does that make guns evil?

evil comes from the heart into the hand and into the tool

if we demonize the tool then we surrender it entirely to evil

------
peterwwillis
On the one hand, they're probably not going to be seriously held accountable
for supporting sex trafficking. Best case, the CEO gets uprooted, or they get
a menial fine. Legislation to support bigger consequences would be great.

On the other hand, SESTA/FOSTA has had a chilling effect on any sexuality on
any platform in the US. There's Facebook events for burlesque shows that are
being removed by Facebook because the word "sexy" is included in the
description. And non-profits that try to promote safer sex, support people in
abusive relationships, etc are removed from social media or have their
websites revoked because they have "sex" in the title.

Where's the middle ground? How can we create consequences for companies that
act unethically without them then banishing all sex-related content?

~~~
guitarbill
By not making laws based on moral outrage but pragmatism. In countries where
sex work/drugs/etc are legal - or at least decriminalised - it isn't
necessarily done because the majority _feel_ this is the right thing to do,
but because of harm reduction after consulting with experts in the field.
Similarly, if you want less dead schoolchildren, this one weird trick of
highly regulating firearms seems to work.

Also, there are other legal avenues, see OJ Simpson's criminal vs civil trials
(edit: this trial is a civil one. Not everything that is wrong has to be a
crime to be punished, and not every court system has to work by the letter of
the law like the US does.

------
aznpwnzor
You can't claim to be as a Service if you don't want all the downsides
associated with it.

You can sell tools as is (not as a service), and if it is used for nefarious
purposes, your hands are morally and legally clean. you can seek to make that
specific tool illegal, but until then, everything's fair game, e.g. you can
try to ban automatic weapons but you can't charge companies for selling them.

------
seppin
It's a modern IBM punchcard case.

~~~
Macross8299
Seems like a bit of a leap to compare enabling prostitution (something that
~50% of Americans think should be legal [0]) to enabling industrialized mass
murder and genocide.

Backpage definitely enabled trafficking in some cases knowingly or not, but I
wouldn't be surprised if it made sex work safer in other cases.

[0]
[https://prostitution.procon.org/view.resource.php?resourceID...](https://prostitution.procon.org/view.resource.php?resourceID=000121)

------
pferde
I wonder whom did Salesforce annoy enough to warrant a media smear campaign
against them.

~~~
erik_landerholm
Benioff seems like a tool. He puts his name on children’s hospitals...it is
possible to donate without people knowing, Keanu does it all the time. If you
don’t hate Salesforce, you haven’t been paying attention. I’ve wanted forever
to rid our company of anything to do with Salesforce, but I work with some
people that can’t handle change.

This law suit seems like a money grab. Go after the deepest pockets, but I
personally won’t shed any tears over it.

~~~
Kaveren
You are complaining about someone donating to a children's hospital and being
credited for it?

~~~
tarsinge
Not talking about Benioff but yes I can complain. If you are very wealthy you
have to contribute back to society, that's not a thing to admire but to
require. And if you donate only a small percent of your wealth, say 1%, I
don't think you deserve more credit than anybody having a net worth of $10k
donating $100, in fact maybe less, even if the absolute amount is way more.

~~~
Macross8299
>And if you donate only a small percent of your wealth, say 1%, I don't think
you deserve more credit than anybody having a net worth of $10k donating $100

That makes sense if you view charity/philanthropy as a signalling device or a
measure for how generous and good people are.

Doesn't really make sense if you care about the actual good/contribution done
though. Ceteris paribus, someone with net worth 100k giving 10k is doing more
absolute good and helping more people than someone with net worth 10k giving
1k. Not to say small donations don't matter or aren't commendable -- they can
definitely add up. But there is "more credit" given because the greater amount
of money is (presumably) helping more people.

------
nraynaud
“I just bought the prostitution module for my ERP, I hope it integrate well
with accounting and procurement”

I am really curious as to how the developers justify taking this kind of gig.

~~~
sethaurus
This case is specifically about sex trafficking, which is coercive and
distinct from prostitution. If you're asserting that sex-work is inherently
unethical, and that developers have an obligation not to lend their services
to it, you need to make that case.

~~~
briandear
Sex trafficking isn’t distinct from prostitution in practice. Human
trafficking is part of the prostitution supply chain.

~~~
Macross8299
> Human trafficking is part of the prostitution supply chain.

Is that an inherent fact of prostitution or a function of prostitution's
dubious legal status?

One could make similar arguments about ultra-violent criminal cartels and
marijuana in the past. "Smoking cannabis isn't distinct from funding Los Zetas
in practice"

~~~
Jolter
There are indications that the illegal status of prostitution does not in fact
contribute to more trafficking, but the opposite.

[http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/45198/1/Neumayer_Legalized_Prostitu...](http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/45198/1/Neumayer_Legalized_Prostitution_Increase_2012.pdf)
"This paper investigates the impact of legalized prostitution on human
trafficking inflows. According to economic theory, there are two opposing
effects of unknown magnitude. The scale effect of legalized prostitution leads
to an expansion of the prostitution market, increasing human trafficking,
while the substitution effect reduces demand for trafficked women as legal
prostitutes are favored over trafficked ones. Our empirical analysis for a
cross-section of up to 150 countries shows that the scale effect dominates the
substitution effect. On average, countries where prostitution is legal
experience larger reported human trafficking inflows. "

~~~
Macross8299
Interesting that this study accounted for regional differences between
prostitution legalization regimes, definitely something that needs to be
considered considering these kind of markets do not exist in a borderless
vacuum.

Have to wonder if the scale effect dominating the substitution effect hints
that perhaps the Swedish model is optimal for reducing trafficking wholesale
while reducing harm (i.e. Johns need strong disincentives in order to not be
terribly indifferent people in aggregate) They suggest that the Swedish model
reduces the scale effect but not enough data to say if it increases the
substitution effect.

