They are also using Gmail to do that. Do you agree with the SESTA/FOSTA legislation?
"The new bill holds website owners legally liable for criminal prosecution for any sex trafficking discussions that are viewable on their platform."
"The legislation says a website is responsible if it “assists, supports, or facilitates” sex trafficking. Some of the vague wording opens up the bill for interpretation and has critics fearing frivolous lawsuits against platforms that didn’t know trafficking was happening on their site."
The bar is not "knowingly aided". The bar is "built a platform that someone else used to sex-traffic".
This is about eradicating purpose-driven websites related to prostitution. Backpage's C-team did some really, really bad stuff. No jury is going to convict the CEO of Reddit because someone somewhere posted a comment about prostitution on a subreddit. Section 230 still exists.
That's the propaganda, but the text does not restrict the limitation of Section 230 safe harbor to only apply to “purpose driven websites related to prostitution”.
> Backpage's C-team did some really, really bad stuff.
None of which requires modifying Section 230 to address.
Are you sure? And are you in a position to be making that call?
No jury is going to convict the CEO of Reddit because someone somewhere posted a comment about prostitution on a subreddit.
That's probably why Reddit eliminated basically all the subreddits related to prostitution. They're also probably less concerned about their CEO being jailed than they are about massive fines.
MX records are gone at that point, so the press cannot contact general counsel for comments.
Laws need to be clear enough where you can head off charges before they are filed with a letter to an investigator explaining why any case would be doomed. Section 230 drew bright lines and enabled that. If prosecutors think they can get to trial, and SESTA makes that dramatically easier through its loose language, that dramatically ups their leverage.
Under the advice of his/her legal team (lawyers).
But yeah, similarly useful technology exists. I don't know if it's in use at all in order to fight abuse like this.
Source: https://blog.google/products/gmail/g-suite-gains-traction-in... (and I work on Gmail ads).
Doesn't that mean you are now on the hook for enabling sex trafficking with SESTA if a gmail account was used? Or is there a loophole wherein if you promise extra double hard not to look at said content, you're not liable? But in that case, why are you guys deleting teh p0rnz?
If it's about whether Google "knowingly" enabled sex trafficking, then it seems like a pretty simple argument is "sure, we knew about porn, but we didn't know about the sex trafficking" is a pretty reasonable defense.
Also, I don't know, I just work here.
No email data is used for any ad targeting
If people were posting this on a public forum like Google Plus or something it would be a fair comparison. But Gmail hosting private accounts isn't quite the same.
And if there were a large infrastructure to use something like Gmail to traffic children then, yes, I would expect them to comply with the law to crack down on that behavior or face legal action.
People seem to think that all Backpage did was run ads.
That's wrong. You should read what they actually did.
https://www.hsgac.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/Backpage%20Report...
You should read what Backpage themselves were saying. They claimed that the Communications Decency Act means they had no responsibility for that ads that appear. This was tested several times in court, and the courts often agreed with Backpage.
So, after those court cases Backpage knew that ads were appearing because that was a finding of the court.
Please read pages 7 and 8 which give details of some of the cases against Backpage.
EG
> Although the court concluded that the plaintiffs “ha[d] made a persuasive case” that “Backpage has tailored its website to make sex trafficking easier,” it nevertheless upheld the dismissal of the suit under Section 230 on the ground that the site’s features did not render Backpage a content-creator. The court noted that “[i]f the evils that the appellants have identified are deemed to outweigh the First Amendment values that drive the CDA, the remedy is through legislation, not through litigation