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Comment by troncjb | Hacker News Reader

This is wrong. SESTA-FOSTA has dramatically lowered the bar. Some quotes:

"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".

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This is not that vague. If I post a comment about prostitution on HN, HN is not liable (HN is clearly not a sex trafficking site), whereas the operator of The Erotic Review is definitely within scope of getting fucked.

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.

> This is about eradicating purpose-driven websites related to prostitution.

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.

So craigslist was/is a purpose-driven websites related to prostitution? The had to take down their entire dating section, which was both full of sex-workers and honest personals, because some of them might be trafficking victims. This is one of those cases where purportedly desired first order effects are minimal but obvious blue law second order effects dominate.

when the classifieds sites like craigslist took the erotic section down, people just post ads in the for sale section, the jobs wanted section, the small business section, the services section, basically any other section...

Gosh, it must be so awful for the market for transcriptional sex to spill over to those innocent boards, with the foul unnatural acts that everyone should be prevented. . . oh wait everyone who isn't a test tube baby is a product of a sex act. And look it's being offered for sale, as a contract or service job. Seems appropriate I hope the law bothers to catch up with reality.

They might use certain obscure language as a form of steganography. Just like certain words are non-descriptive (but become descriptive over time) such as in street language or street names for [certain] drugs.

If I post a comment about prostitution on HN, HN is not liable

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.

I think the biggest issue is having your domain seized prior to trial and conviction.

MX records are gone at that point, so the press cannot contact general counsel for comments.

I'd like to offer you my services as a prostitute, and also as a trafficker of humans.

In my view as a lawyer, SESTA guts Section 230. Nobody is going convict the CEO of reddit sure. But by the time you’re on trial for facilitating sex trafficking you’re pretty screwed already.

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.

After the law was passed, Reddit immediately banned a large number of communities such as /r/Escorts, /r/MaleEscorts, /r/SugarDaddy, /r/weeddeals, and even seemingly benign subreddits like /r/cigarmarket, /r/scotchswap and /r/pipetobaccomarket, among many others. So it appears the CEO of Reddit disagrees with you about how broad his liability is under this law.

> So it appears the CEO of Reddit disagrees

Under the advice of his/her legal team (lawyers).

TBH, that sounds sensible to me. Keep in mind that the words mean nothing without judicial process. In most cases vague language is intentionally introduced to give the judge latitude in handing out judgements. The stricter the language, the easier it is to find loopholes.

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