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Craigslist drops adult listings; no explanation given.
joshofalltrades
Class TraitorSmoke-filled roomRegistered User regular
Class TraitorSmoke-filled roomRegistered User regular
Craigslist drops adult services listings
After years of being associated with prostitution/escort services, Craigslist has finally caved to pressure and done away with it. I think the article is pretty much spot on about that sort of thing likely moving to the "casual encounters" section of the site, and since it doesn't exactly have the likes of the Penny Arcade forum moderating team keeping it spam-free this seems largely ceremonial to me.
Should Craigslist get those moderators? It seems like a good idea. I know that I hardly ever use the site because of the overload of spam, bots and prostitutes. There are good listings on there still, though, and I do check it from time to time. It just seems odd that such a large, well-frequented place on the web has the reputation it does. I actually know a dude who used Craigslist to service other men and it's how he made his living for years. I didn't find out about it until recently, though.
Do you think this will help improve the reputation of Craiglist? Should law enforcement keep a closer eye on it, or force the administrators to ensure adult material does not appear even on the "casual encounters" section of the site?
After years of mounting public pressure, Craigslist appears to have surrendered a battle over sexual ads on its website that some viewed as a test case for the boundaries of online freedom.
The popular San Francisco classifieds site removed its controversial adult services section late Friday, defiantly replacing the link with the word "censored." The move followed a torrent of legal threats and negative media reports that highlighted ads within the category that promoted prostitution and child trafficking, or led to violence against women.
The harshest critics have called Craigslist an "online pimp" and the "Wal-Mart of online sex trafficking." Last year, an Illinois sheriff filed a lawsuit that accused the site's owners of knowingly promoting and facilitating prostitution, while the South Carolina Attorney General threatened criminal action against the company.
Late last month, attorneys general in 18 states demanded the removal of the site's adult category, saying the company wasn't doing enough to block ads for illicit services. Rep. Jackie Speier, D-Hillsborough, set up a House Judiciary Committee hearing for later this month to explore how sites like Craigslist are being used to "facilitate criminal activity."
Speier initially applauded the removal of the adult category in a statement on Saturday.
"Craigslist's decision demonstrates a commitment to seeing these horrific abuses end, and I commend them for taking this step," she said.
About a half hour later, however, her office issued a revised statement with a far different tone. "The site is down but not forgotten," the statement said. "We can't forget the victims, we can't rest easy. Child sex trafficking continues and lawmakers need to fight future machinations of Internet-driven sites that peddle children."
No explanation for move
Craigslist executives didn't immediately respond to inquires Saturday, so it was unclear why they made the decision at this point. For that matter, it's possible the company is attempting to make a point with the "censored" label and plans to flip the section back on.
In an interview with The Chronicle late last month, the company's chief executive, Jim Buckmaster, was steadfast in his stance that removing the adult section wouldn't address the underlying issue.
"Is moving advertising around our best hope for addressing these harms?" he said. "Then the ads fall under personals, and how long before the demand is that we shut down personals? And where do those ads go next? What other sections of our site would they like us to shut down?"
Some outside observers also questioned the wisdom of removing the adult services category, and the legal basis for compelling Craigslist to do so.
Web publishers are generally protected by the Digital Millennium Copyright Act and Communications Decency Act from the illegal actions of third parties who use their sites, though there are narrow exceptions in the latter law when it comes to criminal statutes.
"The legal analysis hasn't changed," said Matt Zimmerman, senior staff attorney for the Electronic Frontier Foundation. "Craigslist isn't legally culpable for these posts, but the public pressure has increased and Craigslist is a small company. My guess is that they may have just decided that the public pressure was too big."
Fear of chilling effect
The broader concern is that making publishers responsible for the behavior of their users, whether through new laws or legal threats, will force them to adopt more conservative standards over what's allowed on their sites. That could have a chilling effect on online expression, said Brian Carver, an attorney and assistant professor at the School of Information at UC Berkeley.
"If you impose liability on Craigslist, YouTube and Facebook for anything their users do, then they're not going to take chances," he said in an earlier interview. "It would likely result in the takedown of what might otherwise be perfectly legitimate free expression."
Zimmerman added that any migration of ads for illicit services to other parts of Craigslist, like the personals section, would potentially make them that much more difficult to monitor and catch.
The Associated Press reported Saturday that Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal, one of the attorneys general who pressed for the change, said he welcomed the removal of the adult section and was trying to verify Craigslist's official policy going forward.
Attempts at screening
Buckmaster said that Craigslist already does far more than other websites and many print publications to monitor and filter out ads for illegal services.
In late 2008, with the attorneys general from more than 40 states demanding changes, Craigslist began requiring posters to provide a working phone number, a small per-ad fee and credit card verification to encourage compliance with the site's guidelines. Since spring 2009, the company has manually screened the images and texts of every ad submitted to its adult section before it is published. Any that indicate the involvement of an underage person are reported to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, Buckmaster said.
But suggestive posts have still managed to slip through to the site, like massage ads featuring photos of women in their underwear, providing an opening for continued criticism.
Until the brouhaha over adult ads, Craigslist was mainly known as the small, quirky company that got the best of far bigger rivals by focusing on the needs of its users rather than profits. Buckmaster called the widespread suggestion that the company is profiteering from prostitution ads "galling," and used recent blog entries to hit back at certain critics and journalists in a tone that revealed palpable frustration.
The Rebecca Project for Human Rights of Washington, D.C., has been one of the most vocal critics of the adult services section, placing ads in major newspapers, including The Chronicle, calling for its removal.
Executive Director Malika Saada Saar said she was encouraged that the company listened, but then went on to echo Buckmaster's trepidation about what will happen next.
"I would hope that there is that commitment ... to implement a more comprehensive screening process," she said. "My fear is that the ads will migrate to the 'casual encounters' section and pimps and traffickers can sell children without even having to pay for that ad."
After years of being associated with prostitution/escort services, Craigslist has finally caved to pressure and done away with it. I think the article is pretty much spot on about that sort of thing likely moving to the "casual encounters" section of the site, and since it doesn't exactly have the likes of the Penny Arcade forum moderating team keeping it spam-free this seems largely ceremonial to me.
Should Craigslist get those moderators? It seems like a good idea. I know that I hardly ever use the site because of the overload of spam, bots and prostitutes. There are good listings on there still, though, and I do check it from time to time. It just seems odd that such a large, well-frequented place on the web has the reputation it does. I actually know a dude who used Craigslist to service other men and it's how he made his living for years. I didn't find out about it until recently, though.
Do you think this will help improve the reputation of Craiglist? Should law enforcement keep a closer eye on it, or force the administrators to ensure adult material does not appear even on the "casual encounters" section of the site?
joshofalltrades on
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It isn't Craigslist's responsibility to be the police. If there are illegal activities being advertised then that is an issue for law enforcement to take up with those who placed the advertisement and those performing the illegal activies.
Exactly. But this is not how most people work. Also, who's to say that Craigslist doesn't improve to lot of sex workers? I've heard smart people say that Craigslist was somehow responsible for the "Craigslist murders". How can you fight that.
― Marcus Aurelius
Path of Exile: themightypuck
but seriously, if these fascists want to stop people from talking online they should hire 100,000 "moderators" to wander around craigs list and the rest of the internet to track down such illegal things.
That would solve the jobs problem, and increase the deficit. 3 threads solved!
Seriously though, this is a good example of the government and social forces trying to put the cat back in the bag. Don't they know the correct way to do it? You don't force it back in your entice it with tuna.
Oh hey, I've just realised another ideological inconsistency for republicans.
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I think this is the most important part of the article: if the goal is to put all potentially illicit material on one page, this page should be the easiest, quickest and most reliable way to monitor this material. Craigslist is obviously one small company with a large userbase, are they going to be able to monitor all content and judge whether it is illegal or not in either one of 51 states (running on the assumption no one else in the world uses Craigslist)? The act that protects online businesses against their own users makes it so that a company is not legally obliged to do all this, but a modicum of moderation is expected of companies.
It's a discussion we've had here before: who polices the internet?
Although I did always wonder why people could openly engage in something that's illegal. I think most civilized countries have legalized prostitution, but we loves us some bible down here.
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There are heaps of suburban brothels as well, that are usually owner operated, with one or two other staff. Which if I recall correctly was one of the desired outcomes of the law change. Local councils in Auckland, Hamilton, Tauranga (i think?) and Christchurch have repeatedly tried to subvert the law by local by-law or parliamentary bill, in order to restrict these suburban operations that refuse to be boxed into a particular district.
I think there may have even been a court case or two on this topic, usually relating to planning law
Now to tie it a bit to the topic; the problem of child prostitution was always there, you only saw it so obviously because it became electronic. Taking it off the electronic world will not take it off the real one, it only hides it.
A man using craigslist to post/find ads can be monitored. A man drawing two chalk lines on the trash can on 25th and 7th cannot. So these retarded pressure groups are shooting themselves in the foot.
Craigslist is a business. One portion of that business had little upside and huge downside from a business perspective. So they shut that portion down. Adult Services was absolutely hurting Craigslist as a business. Maybe they are looking to sell and Adult Services and the negative publicity stemming from it was scaring people off. Who knows.
There are lots of ways to connect with 'adult services,' including probably a bunch of websites. "Totally unverified, nearly unmoderated forum" is probably not the best method.
that's why we call it the struggle, you're supposed to sweat
It's easier to target Craigslist
It was shut down because of sex with childern?
The more sensible thing to do would have been to have hired a whole slew of moderators to put a stop to this behavior, of course, but from what I've heard the craigslist management is extremely reluctant to hire new personnel for some reason, so if they're unwilling to do that this was pretty much the only thing they could do.
I generally disagree, but I suspect that there are major regional differences. I've known a number of sex workers and the pseudo-personal-ad nature of Craigslist made it easier to screen clientele for creeps. That said, the comment above that this will move to Casual Encounters is probably accurate. They'll just post ads looking for "a generous gentleman."
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
Criminal activity in a public forum is something that you'd appreciate if you were trying to actually find and stop criminals.
Not really. There's the societal message to consider as well.
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That's my corner, bitch. I'll cut you!
To me this is another case of blaming the technology. Sure it made it easier, but instead of trying to improve social programs, the government spends their resources fighting with CraigsList. Like everyone else has said, it's just going to move to a different section, or they'll go back to traditional means.