Both sex worker anecdotes, and some larger studies, suggest the availability of such online services actually reduce violence, homicide, and sex trafficking. See for example:
Agreed. The feds just destroyed what could have been their biggest ally against sex trafficking. Even if BackPage itself was not cooperative, the fact that the feds didn't have some sort of automated system that would scrape phone numbers/emails from this site, get warrants to monitor them, and then send humans to assist the girls and arrest the pimps, is unreal to me. They literally had a directory of sex trafficking victims and victimizers that has now been destroyed and pushed underground. This in no way fixed the problem, it just spread it out and made it orders of magnitude harder to deal with.
The larger issues surround freedom of speech and the protections that online service providers have. I would have expected this kind of thing to happen after FOSTA was officially signed into law, which hasn't happened yet. Apparently Michael Lacey, a cofounder of Backpage, has been criminally charged [1]. I don't know all the issues involved, but overall it's a scary day if you own a website that has anything to do with personal ads.
Basic neutral listing sites with links to resources like Backpage outwardly appeared probably are; to the extent that the allegations that the operators actively collaborated with and knowingly worked to conceal trafficking of minors, Backpage itself may not have been.
While there is clearly a crusade against the former (as the aerlier attacks on CLs erotic/adult services listings made clear), and that's probably why Backpage got lots of attention in the first place, it's not clear that the reality of Backpage matched the surface appearance or the reality of the earlier targets.
It's not being siezed because it was allowing adverts for sex.
It's being siezed because it collaborated with criminal gangs who were kidnapping children and selling those children for sex.
People who think Backpage was helping law enforcement keep track of child rapists should read what Backpage themselves admit.
For the "they help law enforcement" argument to work Backpage needed to have kept the orginal ad text submitted by the criminal gangs and then either report that to law enforcement, or have it available to turn over when given a court order. What they actually did add a filter that removed words suggestive of illegal activity and then post the ad anyway.
> At the direction of CEO Carl Ferrer, the company programmed this electronic filter to “strip” —that is, delete—hundreds of words indicative of sex trafficking ( including child sex trafficking) or prostitution from ads before their publication. The terms that Backpage has automatically deleted from ads before publication include “lolita,” “teenage,” “rape,” “young,” “amber alert,” “little girl,” “teen,” “fresh,” “innocent,” and “school girl.” When a user submitted an adult ad containing one of these “stripped” words, Backpage’s Strip Term From Ad filter would immediately delete the discrete word and the remainder of the ad would be published. While the Strip Term From Ad filter changed nothing about the true nature of the advertised transaction or the real age of the person being sold for sex, thanks to the filter, Backpage’s adult ads looked “cleaner than ever.” Manual editing entailed the deletion of language similar to the words and phrases that the Strip Term From Ad filter automatically deleted—including terms indicative of criminality
Clearly, the "they help law enforcement" argument is fucking bogus.
I’ve seen some of the studies and agree. That said, the senate report specific to backpage raises concerns.
I’ve personally donated to St James Infirmary in SF and related to charities that provide related protections.
Even in places where prostitution is legalized (Amsterdam), trafficking is an issue. When I was in Amsterdam 7 or so years ago, I recall stories of Russian and other traffickers.
>and some larger studies, suggest the availability of such online services actually reduce violence, homicide, and sex trafficking. See for example:
What study was this and how do we know its results are accurate and apply in this case?
Edit: Also, hopefully we as a society should be looking to reduce, not increase a trade where a human being has to sell themselves like a piece of meat.
Reducing violence, homicide, and sex trafficking are not the intention -- the intention is enforcing the law. If sex workers want to do their work then they can get on the first flight to Amsterdam.
Everyone who's decrying the demise of backpage as a safe and beneficial place, please take a moment and read the first two pages of the Senate Report.
Backpage had a system in place to detect ads offering e.g. child sex and... edit those ads to conceal their criminal nature from detection by rephrasing the give-away words with less obvious ones. You would think they would report those ads, but no - they concealed.
Legal problems against Backpage have been brewing for awhile. Its CEO was arrested in 2016 and charged with pimping. The pimping charges have since been thrown out but he and his fellow execs face 27 other charges, including money laundering: http://www.sacbee.com/news/local/crime/article168969032.html
Yup, people would like to spin this as the government cracking down on garden-variety prostitution, yet Backpage in particular has many dubious ties to child trafficking.
Lacey and Larkin, who started New Times and Village Voice have been getting falsely arrested to try to shut them up multiple times because they are very ardent civil rights donators and organizers [2] and cause big trouble for authoritarians like Arpaio in Arizona [3].
My guess is all of the charges will be dropped as it was mainly to ad hominem them to allow this Backpage takedown.
> Backpage started as the literal back page of the New Times, filled with classified ads. [1]
The New Times has a history in being pro-civil rights and anti-war [3][5].
> The Phoenix New Times is a free alternative weekly Phoenix, Arizona newspaper, published each Thursday. It was the founding publication of New Times Media (now Village Voice Media), but The Village Voice is now the flagship publication of that company.[3]
> The paper was founded in 1970 by a group of students at Arizona State University, led by Frank Fiore, Karen Lofgren, Michael Lacey, Bruce Stasium, Nick Stupey, Gayle Pyfrom, Hal Smith, and later, Jim Larkin, as a counterculture response to the Kent State shootings in the spring of that year. Gary Brennan played a role in its creation. According to the 20th Anniversary issue of the New Times, published on May 2, 1990, Fiore suggested that the anti-war crowd put out its own paper. The first summer issues were called the Arizona Times and assembled in the staff's La Crescenta apartments across from ASU. The Arizona Times was renamed the New Times as the first college issue went to press in September 1970.[3]
New Times has been kicking up dust on authoritarianism since the 70s. Lacey and Larkin also won a lawsuit against Arizona as recently as 2013 for false arrest which is still used to attack them [3].
> In December 2013, the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors agreed to pay Phoenix New Times founders Michael Lacey and Jim Larkin $3.75 million to settle their false arrest lawsuit against the county defendants.
Take a look at their civil rights fund to see what I mean about how they take authority orgs/politicians to task and encourage civil rights [2].
They have been trying to take down the New Times, Village Voice Media and Backpage for nearly a decade and a half [3].
Both Larkin and Lacey are big civil right advocates and donate heavily to civil rights causes, sex rights, gay rights and immigrant rights [2][3] and the New Times attack politicians for corruption on the regular. After they attacked Arpaio they had nearly a decade of attacks from him and associated groups [3]. They did a strange tactic attacking Larkin and Lacey going after New Times readers data and identities which Lacey and Larkin refused to give up.
> In October 2007, Maricopa County sheriff's deputies arrested Lacey and Larkin on charges of revealing secret grand jury information concerning the investigations of the New Times's long-running feud with Maricopa County sheriff Joe Arpaio. In July 2004, the New Times published Arpaio's home address in the context of a story about his real estate dealings, which the County Attorney's office was investigating as a possible crime under Arizona state law. A special prosecutor served Village Voice Media with a subpoena ordering it to produce "all documents" related to the original real estate article, as well as "all Internet web site traffic information" to a number of articles that mentioned Arpaio. [3]
Arpaio tried to get all information on all Phoenix New Times readers and the paper has been known to be tough on Arpaio overreaches in Arizona on immigrants and civil rights advocates.
> The prosecutor further ordered Village Voice Media to produce the IP addresses of all visitors to the Phoenix New Times website since January 1, 2004, as well as which websites those readers had been to prior to visiting. As an act of "civil disobedience", Lacey and Larkin published the contents of the subpoena on or about October 18, which resulted in their arrests the same day.On the following day, the county attorney dropped the case after declining to pursue charges against the two. [3]
> The special prosecutor's subpoena included a demand for the names of all people who had read the Arpaio story on the newspaper's website. It was the revealing of the subpoena information by the New Times which led to the arrests. Maricopa County Attorney Andrew Thomas dropped the charges less than 24 hours after the two were arrested [3]
> In the weeks following the arrests, members of the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies, of which the Phoenix New Times is a member, provided links on their websites to places where Arpaio's address could be found. This was done to show solidarity with the Phoenix New Times.[3]
There is a strange section of the Backpage report attacking Lacey and Larkin for selling it to an outside investor who is offshore. They appear to hide ownership from them some might say wisely if it is being the whipping boy for 'trafficking' claims when really it is a sex worker ad website [4].
> Third, despite the reported sale of Backpage to an undisclosed foreign company in 2014, the true beneficial owners of the company are James Larkin, Michael Lacey, and Carl Ferrer. Acting through a complex chain of domestic and international shell companies, Lacey and Larkin lent Ferrer over $600 million to purchase Backpage from them. But as a result of this deal, Lacey and Larkin retain significant financial and operational control, hold almost complete debt equity in the company, and still receive large distributions of company profits. According to the consultant that structured the deal, moreover, this transaction appears to provide no tax benefits. Instead, it serves only to obscure Ferrer’s U.S.-based ownership and conceal Lacey and Larkin’s continued beneficial ownership[4].
The whole report on Backpage, and their owners Lacey and Larkin who started New Times and Village Voice, might be a massive ad hominem [4]. It also appears to be an attack on owners of alternative media influence and funding for civil rights matters [2].
My guess is Lacey and Larkin, civil rights fighters that seem similar to Larry Flynt [2], won't let this just happen and they'll fight it. Most of the attacks on Backpage, and previously the New Times and Village Voice, attacks their character via ad hominems because they are causing trouble for authoritarians and pushing alternative news media funding, my guess is this takedown of Backpage is no different.
I have posted more here on it: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16780579, everytime they have been arrested they have later been cleared and even won damages for false arrest in 2013 in Arizona. It is easier for authoritarians to win initially against civil rights advocates if you associate them with bad things and ad hominems, but the truth prevails. This could be a modern day civil liberties event unfolding.
Backpage was a major example of why SESTA/FOSTA was "necessary". It seems convenient that it wasn't taken down until after the passage of SESTA (despite the fact that the takedown did not leverage any of the new provisions, AFAICT (EDIT: as cft points out, the bill has not yet been signed by the President, so clearly it was not necessary))
Backpage.com was a general purpose onlined classified system that included a handful of adult services sections among dozens of others. The use of “sex marketplace” here explains the basis of the seizure, but is misleading as a description of the site seized (Unlike, say, the myredbook.com seizure, which was a straight-up sex marketplace.)
I have a real estate business and this is one of the sites I have used to post my real estate listings. It wasn't a large part of business, but I did get regular leads from the site. I mostly used craigslist, facebook and zillow, but this was a solid 4th place source of leads for me. I'm self employed and these sites are how I make my living. So not all of the users are posting sex ads. I don't like the title calling it a sex marketplace. It makes it sounds like this is the only thing on the website.
On the one hand, I don't think prostitution should be illegal.
On the other hand, it's not clear whether marketplaces like backpage bring the black-market closer to the light of day & make things safer for sex workers, or if they amplify demand to the point where suppliers have incentive to find new sex workers using more and more coercive methods.
To help you decide, consider what you think of when you hear "prostitution." Do you think of women standing on a street corner smoking and getting in cars and getting beat up by pimps and unable to go to the police for help like in 80s movies?
Or do you think of something more like a doctor's office with security cameras, a receptionist, online reviews?
Because it seems modern, legal prostitution is a lot more like a medical service, similar to how veterinarians calm a cat in heat [1].
The Backpage version, where they knowingly facilited ads for children who'd been kidnapped, drugged, and were being raped for money, is a bad idea.
It's really fucking weird reading this thread and seeing so much support for backpage. I hope it's because people don't know what Backpage were actually doing.
The thing is, those engaged in commercial sex have a vested interest in defending deregulation of all parts of it: that way they make more money. If you were to try to pass legislation that, for example, would require a license to purchase sex and that the license would be granted only upon passing sexual health medical exams, people selling sex would see this as an obstacle to getting as many clients as possible. I know several people think you can just tell at a glance if someone has an STI and that condoms give all the protection you need.
I think there are a lot of vulnerable people in the sex trade who just aren't speaking up because, well, they're vulnerable.
Not everyone is vulnerable, of course. There are those who are perfectly ok and happy and vocal. But that can't be everyone.
I'm curious if this only made possible by the recent SESTA/FOSTA law that was passed. It's not like Backpage is anything new, so why take it down now?
If it is related to those laws, this is significant precedent for websites being responsible for user posted content. I'm afraid of what it's going to do to communities like Reddit and HN.
If I post a zero-day in the comments section here, YC could be responsible for the damages it causes.
Can we stop treating sex workers like second class citizens? Fucking Christ, getting rid of vetted escort aggregates like Backpage will only increase trafficking.
FOSTA and SESTA are anti-sex work bills disguised as sex trafficking bills so that politicians can attack anybody criticizing them.
I worked with the defense department on tracking human trafficking for several years. Backpage was literally the front door to so much trafficking. There are many steps the site could have taken to stop trafficking but it didn’t. The consensual sex worker should not rely on a marketplace that allows the abuse of children and enslaved persons.
Craigslist declined to be the testcase, it will be interesting to see how this goes with lawmakers specifically targeting the site. Is tinder or other e-dating forums next?
An outright prostitution marketplace (review site, advertising, transaction facilitation) seems like one of the most obvious businesses for jurisdictional arbitrage. It's not illegal in some markets (although I'm not sure which); unlike an online service which holds assets, there's no real need to identify or know the site operators. The natural advertisers on such a site are either porn/adult affiliates or prostitutes themselves, none of which would have problems contracting with an offshore entity.
Bitcoin today, especially if you couldn't use any of the major wallet providers, is probably beyond the usability cliff for people in this market, but it's enough of a closed market that some kind of payment system should be bootstrapable.
Most likely effect of pushing this marketplace underground will be to reduce its size (total sex transactions per year) but make it much more dangerous for those who continue to participate (both buyers and sellers).
[+] [-] gojomo|8 years ago|reply
https://thinkprogress.org/craigslist-erotic-services-platfor...
[+] [-] downandout|8 years ago|reply
The larger issues surround freedom of speech and the protections that online service providers have. I would have expected this kind of thing to happen after FOSTA was officially signed into law, which hasn't happened yet. Apparently Michael Lacey, a cofounder of Backpage, has been criminally charged [1]. I don't know all the issues involved, but overall it's a scary day if you own a website that has anything to do with personal ads.
[1] https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/local/arizona-investiga...
[+] [-] troncjb|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dragonwriter|8 years ago|reply
While there is clearly a crusade against the former (as the aerlier attacks on CLs erotic/adult services listings made clear), and that's probably why Backpage got lots of attention in the first place, it's not clear that the reality of Backpage matched the surface appearance or the reality of the earlier targets.
[+] [-] DanBC|8 years ago|reply
It's being siezed because it collaborated with criminal gangs who were kidnapping children and selling those children for sex.
People who think Backpage was helping law enforcement keep track of child rapists should read what Backpage themselves admit.
For the "they help law enforcement" argument to work Backpage needed to have kept the orginal ad text submitted by the criminal gangs and then either report that to law enforcement, or have it available to turn over when given a court order. What they actually did add a filter that removed words suggestive of illegal activity and then post the ad anyway.
> At the direction of CEO Carl Ferrer, the company programmed this electronic filter to “strip” —that is, delete—hundreds of words indicative of sex trafficking ( including child sex trafficking) or prostitution from ads before their publication. The terms that Backpage has automatically deleted from ads before publication include “lolita,” “teenage,” “rape,” “young,” “amber alert,” “little girl,” “teen,” “fresh,” “innocent,” and “school girl.” When a user submitted an adult ad containing one of these “stripped” words, Backpage’s Strip Term From Ad filter would immediately delete the discrete word and the remainder of the ad would be published. While the Strip Term From Ad filter changed nothing about the true nature of the advertised transaction or the real age of the person being sold for sex, thanks to the filter, Backpage’s adult ads looked “cleaner than ever.” Manual editing entailed the deletion of language similar to the words and phrases that the Strip Term From Ad filter automatically deleted—including terms indicative of criminality
Clearly, the "they help law enforcement" argument is fucking bogus.
https://www.hsgac.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/Backpage%20Report...
[+] [-] emodendroket|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] empath75|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jmspring|8 years ago|reply
I’ve personally donated to St James Infirmary in SF and related to charities that provide related protections.
Even in places where prostitution is legalized (Amsterdam), trafficking is an issue. When I was in Amsterdam 7 or so years ago, I recall stories of Russian and other traffickers.
[+] [-] pjc50|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] itakedrugs|8 years ago|reply
I was thinking that they wanted it to be more hidden... so that they could ignore it.
[+] [-] gowld|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] himom|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Fnoord|8 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] ksk|8 years ago|reply
What study was this and how do we know its results are accurate and apply in this case?
Edit: Also, hopefully we as a society should be looking to reduce, not increase a trade where a human being has to sell themselves like a piece of meat.
[+] [-] ihsw2|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] DenisM|8 years ago|reply
Backpage had a system in place to detect ads offering e.g. child sex and... edit those ads to conceal their criminal nature from detection by rephrasing the give-away words with less obvious ones. You would think they would report those ads, but no - they concealed.
[1] https://www.hsgac.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/Backpage%20Report...
[+] [-] danso|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] creaghpatr|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] drawkbox|8 years ago|reply
My guess is all of the charges will be dropped as it was mainly to ad hominem them to allow this Backpage takedown.
> Backpage started as the literal back page of the New Times, filled with classified ads. [1]
The New Times has a history in being pro-civil rights and anti-war [3][5].
> The Phoenix New Times is a free alternative weekly Phoenix, Arizona newspaper, published each Thursday. It was the founding publication of New Times Media (now Village Voice Media), but The Village Voice is now the flagship publication of that company.[3]
> The paper was founded in 1970 by a group of students at Arizona State University, led by Frank Fiore, Karen Lofgren, Michael Lacey, Bruce Stasium, Nick Stupey, Gayle Pyfrom, Hal Smith, and later, Jim Larkin, as a counterculture response to the Kent State shootings in the spring of that year. Gary Brennan played a role in its creation. According to the 20th Anniversary issue of the New Times, published on May 2, 1990, Fiore suggested that the anti-war crowd put out its own paper. The first summer issues were called the Arizona Times and assembled in the staff's La Crescenta apartments across from ASU. The Arizona Times was renamed the New Times as the first college issue went to press in September 1970.[3]
New Times has been kicking up dust on authoritarianism since the 70s. Lacey and Larkin also won a lawsuit against Arizona as recently as 2013 for false arrest which is still used to attack them [3].
> In December 2013, the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors agreed to pay Phoenix New Times founders Michael Lacey and Jim Larkin $3.75 million to settle their false arrest lawsuit against the county defendants.
Take a look at their civil rights fund to see what I mean about how they take authority orgs/politicians to task and encourage civil rights [2].
They have been trying to take down the New Times, Village Voice Media and Backpage for nearly a decade and a half [3].
Both Larkin and Lacey are big civil right advocates and donate heavily to civil rights causes, sex rights, gay rights and immigrant rights [2][3] and the New Times attack politicians for corruption on the regular. After they attacked Arpaio they had nearly a decade of attacks from him and associated groups [3]. They did a strange tactic attacking Larkin and Lacey going after New Times readers data and identities which Lacey and Larkin refused to give up.
> In October 2007, Maricopa County sheriff's deputies arrested Lacey and Larkin on charges of revealing secret grand jury information concerning the investigations of the New Times's long-running feud with Maricopa County sheriff Joe Arpaio. In July 2004, the New Times published Arpaio's home address in the context of a story about his real estate dealings, which the County Attorney's office was investigating as a possible crime under Arizona state law. A special prosecutor served Village Voice Media with a subpoena ordering it to produce "all documents" related to the original real estate article, as well as "all Internet web site traffic information" to a number of articles that mentioned Arpaio. [3]
Arpaio tried to get all information on all Phoenix New Times readers and the paper has been known to be tough on Arpaio overreaches in Arizona on immigrants and civil rights advocates.
> The prosecutor further ordered Village Voice Media to produce the IP addresses of all visitors to the Phoenix New Times website since January 1, 2004, as well as which websites those readers had been to prior to visiting. As an act of "civil disobedience", Lacey and Larkin published the contents of the subpoena on or about October 18, which resulted in their arrests the same day.On the following day, the county attorney dropped the case after declining to pursue charges against the two. [3]
> The special prosecutor's subpoena included a demand for the names of all people who had read the Arpaio story on the newspaper's website. It was the revealing of the subpoena information by the New Times which led to the arrests. Maricopa County Attorney Andrew Thomas dropped the charges less than 24 hours after the two were arrested [3]
> In the weeks following the arrests, members of the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies, of which the Phoenix New Times is a member, provided links on their websites to places where Arpaio's address could be found. This was done to show solidarity with the Phoenix New Times.[3]
There is a strange section of the Backpage report attacking Lacey and Larkin for selling it to an outside investor who is offshore. They appear to hide ownership from them some might say wisely if it is being the whipping boy for 'trafficking' claims when really it is a sex worker ad website [4].
> Third, despite the reported sale of Backpage to an undisclosed foreign company in 2014, the true beneficial owners of the company are James Larkin, Michael Lacey, and Carl Ferrer. Acting through a complex chain of domestic and international shell companies, Lacey and Larkin lent Ferrer over $600 million to purchase Backpage from them. But as a result of this deal, Lacey and Larkin retain significant financial and operational control, hold almost complete debt equity in the company, and still receive large distributions of company profits. According to the consultant that structured the deal, moreover, this transaction appears to provide no tax benefits. Instead, it serves only to obscure Ferrer’s U.S.-based ownership and conceal Lacey and Larkin’s continued beneficial ownership[4].
The whole report on Backpage, and their owners Lacey and Larkin who started New Times and Village Voice, might be a massive ad hominem [4]. It also appears to be an attack on owners of alternative media influence and funding for civil rights matters [2].
My guess is Lacey and Larkin, civil rights fighters that seem similar to Larry Flynt [2], won't let this just happen and they'll fight it. Most of the attacks on Backpage, and previously the New Times and Village Voice, attacks their character via ad hominems because they are causing trouble for authoritarians and pushing alternative news media funding, my guess is this takedown of Backpage is no different.
I have posted more here on it: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16780579, everytime they have been arrested they have later been cleared and even won damages for false arrest in 2013 in Arizona. It is easier for authoritarians to win initially against civil rights advocates if you associate them with bad things and ad hominems, but the truth prevails. This could be a modern day civil liberties event unfolding.
[1] https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/local/phoenix/2018/04/0...
[2] http://www.laceyandlarkinfronterafund.org/
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoenix_New_Times
[4] https://www.hsgac.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/Backpage%20Report...
[5] http://www.phoenixnewtimes.com/
[+] [-] JshWright|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cft|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|8 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] dragonwriter|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kemiller|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Mustache|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gregorymichael|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dang|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] stephengillie|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bmpafa|8 years ago|reply
On the one hand, I don't think prostitution should be illegal.
On the other hand, it's not clear whether marketplaces like backpage bring the black-market closer to the light of day & make things safer for sex workers, or if they amplify demand to the point where suppliers have incentive to find new sex workers using more and more coercive methods.
[+] [-] chillingeffect|8 years ago|reply
Or do you think of something more like a doctor's office with security cameras, a receptionist, online reviews?
Because it seems modern, legal prostitution is a lot more like a medical service, similar to how veterinarians calm a cat in heat [1].
[1] https://everything2.com/title/How+to+calm+a+cat+in+heat
[+] [-] DanBC|8 years ago|reply
The Backpage version, where they knowingly facilited ads for children who'd been kidnapped, drugged, and were being raped for money, is a bad idea.
It's really fucking weird reading this thread and seeing so much support for backpage. I hope it's because people don't know what Backpage were actually doing.
https://www.hsgac.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/Backpage%20Report...
[+] [-] stephengillie|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jordigh|8 years ago|reply
The thing is, those engaged in commercial sex have a vested interest in defending deregulation of all parts of it: that way they make more money. If you were to try to pass legislation that, for example, would require a license to purchase sex and that the license would be granted only upon passing sexual health medical exams, people selling sex would see this as an obstacle to getting as many clients as possible. I know several people think you can just tell at a glance if someone has an STI and that condoms give all the protection you need.
I think there are a lot of vulnerable people in the sex trade who just aren't speaking up because, well, they're vulnerable.
Not everyone is vulnerable, of course. There are those who are perfectly ok and happy and vocal. But that can't be everyone.
[+] [-] iooi|8 years ago|reply
If it is related to those laws, this is significant precedent for websites being responsible for user posted content. I'm afraid of what it's going to do to communities like Reddit and HN.
If I post a zero-day in the comments section here, YC could be responsible for the damages it causes.
[+] [-] balozi|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] PrimHelios|8 years ago|reply
FOSTA and SESTA are anti-sex work bills disguised as sex trafficking bills so that politicians can attack anybody criticizing them.
[+] [-] gowld|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] art187|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tyingq|8 years ago|reply
Curious why they are not targeted as well. Maybe better "provider" screening for underage girls?
[+] [-] GCU-Empiricist|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rdl|8 years ago|reply
Bitcoin today, especially if you couldn't use any of the major wallet providers, is probably beyond the usability cliff for people in this market, but it's enough of a closed market that some kind of payment system should be bootstrapable.
[+] [-] randyrand|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fipple|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gustavmarwin|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bhouston|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gregoryrueda|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] paulie_a|8 years ago|reply
Reality, block chain is not the answer to every question
[+] [-] Sargos|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sintaxi|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mxpxrocks10|8 years ago|reply
Backpage.com Seizure and What Happens to Seized Domains https://securitytrails.com/blog/backpage-seize