Oh good. We should crack down on sites like this because you know what was good for sex trafficking victims? Street pimps.
Sigh.
Sigh.
Backpage's management was hiding behind the 3rd-party provisions of the CDA (and the usual last-defense-of-scoundrels, "free speech" absolutism) but were helping to edit and revise ads [2,3] to conceal obviously illegal activity. Thus they were complicit in it.
It's unfortunate, because there's probably a place for a responsibly-managed online clearinghouse for adult services. But there's no indication that the management of Backpage was attempting to offer that; they were hiding under a veil of 'free speech' when it suited them, while at the same time profiting from activity they should have known was illegal (and beyond illegal, morally repugnant even to those of us who take no issue with what consenting adults do between themselves and find prostitution laws outdated and sexist).
[1]: http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/10/07/497006100/...
[2]: http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Justice/2016/1007/Backpage-CEO-...
[3]: https://www.hsgac.senate.gov/subcommittees/investigations/re...
This is interesting, but unfortunately, doing so would probably be illegal, so it will likely be shady characters doing the work.
Sigh....
you either have free speech or you don't, there is no way to be a "free speech absolutist" If you are for censorship, of any type even "hate speech" or other speech you do not personally like you do not support freedom of speech, it really is that simple
>Backpage's management was hiding behind the 3rd-party provisions of the CDA
Following the law is not "hiding", Backpage, nor any other website should be legally responsible for the content posted by people using their platform, that is a very dangerous precedent
>It's unfortunate, because there's probably a place for a responsibly-managed online clearinghouse for adult services.
Government has shut all of these down before targeting BackPage. See myRedBook, theReviewBoard, and several others as examples
The problem is that you can't edit ANYTHING and still be protected by the CDA. And they clearly did it.
https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billNavClient.xhtml...
But all things aren't equal. Most importantly: so long as prostitution is formally illegal, men and women can't be pressured by social norms to participate in sex work. Once prostitution is legalized, the stage is set for that to change: perhaps body integrity isn't nearly as important as bootstrapping oneself to self-reliance, or providing for vulnerable family members.
Usually in economic analyses we stop and ask ourselves if normal people would prefer the choice rather than having it foisted on them: for instance, maybe we'd rather allow ticket scalping because someone with a valuable ticket would probably prefer the option of being able to sell it for a steep profit and pay for health care rather than just having the experience promised by the ticket. But here we have a case where most normal people probably do not want the choice deregulation would allow.
Mainly in areas where prostitution is illegal, thus the police use their power over the "criminal" to abuse them.
Sex workers have no legal method to report this abuse with out also admitting to a crime themselves.
Thus if it were legal, Abuse by police would only be as frequent for sex workers as is for other legal occupations, which much hire than it should be but....
Untrue, social norms can pressure people into formally illegal acts quite easily, and that absolutely happens with sex work now.
Just a few months ago I also read an article here in Sweden where a journalist reached out to sex workers, where the person that agreed on a interview said that they had no pimp. They did all the booking and reservations Online. While anecdotal, its enough to at least question statements like sex workers aren't safer when they can stay out of the street and do their advertisement and booking from home.
Did you have something different in mind?
Actually, they did. With a red-light district you have to be there, exposed to the pimps, to be exposed to the customers. And the density allows pimps to control more people, enough to make the activity profitable.
With out-call services from ads you avoid the presence of the pimps in the first place, and the configuration (outcalls) makes capturing a sex-worker much harder if they try which makes the economics much less attractive. Pimping is a crime of opportunity and outcalls remove most of that.
Also, not being street-people, call-girls get much more respect from police if they need to report a crime.
And we still do have street pimps and street prostitutes, where police haven't flushed them out.
I'm not convinced that this is doing any more good than harm to the majority of the people out there who are engaged in this sort of work.
I find the argument convincing. Unsurprisingly there's not a ton of research on the subject, at least none that comes up on quick searches other than the usual stuff about violence vs sex workers decreasing with legalization.
From what I've read, here in NYC most prostitution is Korean immigrants trafficked to the US to work in massage parlors. They are of age, but clearly coerced. So it really is different all over.