If on the other hand they were actually building features designed to keep more pimps on the platform (not sure what that would look like for pimps specifically vs. other Salesforce use cases, but just hypothetically)Yeah, I have mixed feelings about this article. I've read a number of things that suggest that Backpage was better for women, allowing them to market themselves, protect their safety, etc.
I'm for the decriminalization of sex work -- as described in the book "Working: My life as a prostitute" by Dolores French. She makes the point that legalization usually means regulation and it winds up being just as bad as or worse than being pimped. It winds up being done to benefit male clients at the expense of female sex workers, basically.
So I can easily see a situation where, in a world where the current system typically exploits female sex workers, trying to increase sales as your stated goal could deepen the problems of women who are already victims.
If you are against sex work, please try to help women access other work safely and at a living wage/"equal pay" (instead of or at least in addition to preaching about your opinions that sex work is a bad thing and simply shouldn't be tolerated). Women wind up trapped in part because it pays well and they often have little to no viable alternatives. If you aren't actively working in some way to help make it possible for women to adequately support themselves some other way, you are part of the problem, not part of the solution.
I spent nearly six years homeless. There was no shortage of men offering to give me a few bucks to sleep with them. Meanwhile, I was mostly failing to get taken seriously in my attempts to earn income some other way.
There are reasons why I was able to still say "no" in the face of tremendous circumstantial pressure, but it made me very aware that a lot of women simply don't have enough wherewithal to just say "no" themselves. (There is some truth to the idea that you need a middle class income to be able to afford a middle class morality.)
I was briefly acquainted with another homeless woman whose solution was to move in with some guy she had just met in order to get back into housing. She apparently only spent a few days on the street because of making this choice.
It's perhaps a more polite form of prostitution to call him your boyfriend and not charge by the hour, but I've thought a whole lot about it and I would much rather charge by the hour than move in with some man for his money and wind up probably essentially being his prisoner. This goes double in the case of a stranger I've just met and know nothing about. Wow. That idea just scares the hell out of me.
Edit: Just for the record, I'm also against UBI, in addition to being against "legalization"/regulation of sex work.