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You can’t kill the oldest profession in the world. It will never happen.

You know what FOSTA/SESTA did? Push it deeper underground.

Specifically it made sex trafficking victims harder to rescue, by eliminating the means that LEO used to find them.

Evidence indicates that lawmakers don't care about victims in a meaningfully helpful way. They absolutely crave the power/cash that anti-trafficking rhetoric brings.

A competent press would examine the history of trafficking laws and report the actual outcomes - instead of parroting the PR that pols hand to them.

What evidence can you point to? Genuinely curious, not shitposting.

Here's a start. https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20180705/01033440176/more-...

I was specifically referring to your claim that “lawmakers don't care about victims in a meaningfully helpful way. They absolutely crave the power/cash that anti-trafficking rhetoric brings.” This article says nothing about that, and TechDirt isn’t exactly a reputable, well-researched newsgathering organization. Sure, they’re great at pointing out hypocrisies and weaknesses for our amusement, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen them do any in-depth analysis or reporting.

> I was specifically referring to your claim that lawmakers don't care about victims in a meaningfully helpful way.

Lawmakers were warned that shuttering Backpage would harm LEO efforts to rescue trafficking victims and they passed SESTA/FOSTA anyway.

The law has been used exactly one time.

> I was specifically referring to your claim that They absolutely crave the power/cash that anti-trafficking rhetoric brings

Is your assertion that lawmakers do not crave the power/cash that comes with anti-traffic rhetoric? If so, why do you believe that?

> TechDirt isn’t exactly a reputable, well-researched newsgathering organization.

That's an interesting opinion about one of the few news orgs that actively documents their analysis in every article (inc court filings), consistently targets all administrations (inc popular ones) - and (unlike most news orgs) isn't at all known for parroting Gov/Corp/LEO PR w/o contextual or historical analysis.

> Genuinely curious, not crapposting.

okay

> Lawmakers were warned that shuttering Backpage would harm LEO efforts to rescue trafficking victims and they passed SESTA/FOSTA anyway.

I’ll stipulate to that. But it’s a pretty long logical leap to deduce from the fact that they heard a lot of opinions and made a (perhaps incorrect) judgment call that they don’t care about sex trafficking victims.

Also, linking to other news sources and commenting on them isn’t “newsgathering.” That’s just operating a blog. If they perform their own investigations, then my opinion might change.

> it’s a pretty long logical leap to deduce from the fact that they heard a lot of opinions and made a (perhaps incorrect) judgment call that they don’t care about sex trafficking victims.

Before passage: LEO warned lawmakers and those lawmakers minimized and gaslighted their expert concerns - concerns voiced by the exact people in the best possible position to know.

After passage: LEO exampled the harm done by FOSTA/SESTA and how the law was further endangering sex trafficking victims. In response, lawmakers crowed about the success of the law - w/o offering anything at all that might indicate success.

Creating a law that further harms and endagers sex trafficking victims while pretending the opposite - this seems like a fairly stellar example of not caring about the well being of sex trafficking victims.

This reply is basically a shitpost. You asked for a source and got it, and then complained it wasn't good enough. The linked article actually sources from a local news report. Where's your evidence that this report is incorrect?

In my view, a person making a claim—especially one stating there is “evidence” of this— that a group of people have improper motives in contradiction to the default-held position that their motives are generally good bears the burden of persuasion.

It is one thing to claim that we are passing laws in good faith that end up not working as well as we hoped. It’s quite another make unsubstantiated claims that people are acting in bad faith.

Correction: the politicians are accused of acting Amorally. Of taking action regardless of the consequences, of just not caring about the predicted real life effects, or the observed real life effects of legislation. That they're in it purely for their own interests, which have nothing to do with the victims. That they couldn't care less if the legislation helps anyone, just what it will do for them.

They're not accused of acting Immorally, which would be taking action with mal intent. They're not trying to increase child prostitution. They're not trying to enable it. They're not looking to abuse children themselves.

They're accused of being psychopaths, not criminals.

I don't understand how the default position can be anything but that politicians indeed act amorally. There is a very long history of politicians enacting laws specifically to hide prostitution, not to stop it. There is an equally long history of people asking them to do so. Society definitely wants prostitution. Society also wants very vulnerable prostitutes, well hidden from view.

TechDirt is a SELF-PROCLAIMED rumor mill. It is not a reputable source for anything and the owners make no qualms about it.

> TechDirt is a SELF-PROCLAIMED rumor mill.

I think you may be confused. The articles' consistent and well done sourcing is a solid opposite of rumor-mill behavior.

> It is not a reputable source for anything and the owners make no qualms about it.

Obviously not true as even a casual read will attest. As evidence I offer the site, in partial or it's entirety.

> As evidence I offer the site, in partial or it's entirety.

TechDirt has been on a backslide in readership for years, primarily from it's crappy "we just post what we hear" nonsense. What you see now is a rebranding (eg* "free speech") which has served them better than the previous snicker journalism that they are known for. The fact that they have seemingly well-sourced articles is incidental to the past, which you seem wholly ignorant enough to assume was a quality source.

*It does seem to be working as other sites are increasingly linking to it.

This is the source: https://www.wrtv.com/longform/running-blind-impd-arrests-fir...

From this article:

> “We assume it’s a great thing that Backpage closed down,” Stefanie Jeffers said. “And it is, because it’s horrible that Backpage existed and so much trafficking occurred through the users of Backpage. But I do think that it comes with its dangers too.”

> Jeffers, the founder of the nonprofit Grit Into Grace, works with women who are engaged in street prostitution in Indianapolis to help them get out of the life. She says Backpage’s closure came as a shock to the women she talked to.

I don't get why you're hung up on whether TechDirt is reputable or not, just read the actual article?

Compulsive Techdirt hatred is a weird thing. Without fail, I see it 'evidenced' with w/ unsubstantiated innuendos - pretty much what the haters say TD does.

I suspect if the news article was linked to directly, we wouldn’t be having this specific discussion. But even the source article provides no support for the argument that Congress acted with malice towards the innocent.

There are prostitutes consenting to have paid sex. It’s not necessarily a job borne of desperation.

I would imagine a vanishingly small percentage of people are consenting to be on the receiving end of racial discrimination or hate crimes.

Agreed that decriminalizing prostitution is not a fix to sex trafficking, or the other attendant problems of sex work.

However, we know very well that making prostitution illegal has no effect on those either. All else equal, it's more expensive to fight something you can't stop or even really slow down very much, which is why I think less money should be spent on enforcement than, say, treatment of the inevitable consequences.

(Or better yet, trying to address the underlying factors that drive demand, though we almost never try that)

I think there are legitimately different classes of problems, and some are better addressed through regulation, and others are just made worse.

Racism (read: systematic racism at an organizational or policy level) and worker mistreatment are likely in the former: problems that are possible to at least noticeably mitigate through legislative changes, incentives, and punishments.

Alcohol and drug prohibition I would put into the latter class: things people will continuing doing no matter how illegal they are.

Prostitution seems like it clearly belongs with drugs and alcohol, though I would love to hear the reasons you disagree.

By the way, I have no idea why your comment got downvoted. I disagree with it so far, but it's a coherent argument and not particularly nasty. It's hard to have discussions on HN when dissenting opinions just get buried.

> obesity, racism, worker mistreatment by employers

Not going to lie, but I feel most people don't care about these either. All I see are platitudes.

It's politics.

For example, the criminal justice system is all messed up. Over-criminalization, coercive plea bargains, law enforcement unaccountability etc. But we focus on police shootings of black men, which aren't actually disproportionate to the number of police encounters with black men.

Because it's a thing you can put video of on the television and get people frothy about, but it's not a thing you can solve on its own because it's a consequence of all of those other things and not a cause in itself.

By getting people to focus on the wrong thing, they can get votes without having to do the hard work of solving the underlying problems. Instead they give you empty symbolism -- take down statues, rename stuff -- which doesn't fix anything. More than that, because the underlying problems never get solved that way, they can keep campaigning on it forever.

Exactly. Just like the rise of domestic extremism is a consequence of young men being left behind by technological progress and algorithmic echo chambers. Seeing no way for themselves in the world they are easily radicalized on social media. The mentally ill carry out spectacular displays of violence once they are nurtured by these groups. "Cracking down on domestic extremism" is a convenient way to maintain favor with the upper classes who are fearful of the discontent and militant attitudes and supposed actions of these groups (people are claiming membership in movements that have no central authority). It does not address the problem though and actually "cracking down" will only further inflame it. The solution is finding a way to offer these discarded people a way forward, real opportunity where they can see themselves being somebody that matters in their community. Attaching themselves to an extreme ideology is a cheap, last ditch effort to be somebody.

The only way legalized sex work can fail to reduce trafficking in sex workers is if there's insufficient background checks on sex workers. I'm familiar with the facts you're citing, and that's the only thing that makes sense. It makes precisely no sense to imagine it's a reason to keep sex work illegal.

You make some very interesting points. I don't know why it was modded into invisibility. Speaking for myself, the prostitutes, sorry that should be ‘sex workers’, don't benefit from the job. Who does are the pimps who control the industry. In the case of the Internet that woud be the cyber-pimps. It's a very self-destructive ‘lifestyle’. You'd be better off flipping hamburgers. I know this is a novel concept to some on here but prostitution is degrading both to the ‘sex workers’ and their clients.

-------

Quoting @notsureaboutpg: “This hasn't led to a decrease in trafficking in the countries that have tried it though. Many of them in Europe have become trafficking destinations for women from other countries. There's lots and lots of studies out there that show that decriminalizing prostitution does not lead to lower trafficking or better outcomes for prostitutes.

Also the rhetoric we use here (defeatist, people are going to solicit sex and break the law so let's make it easier for them, etc.) is in stark contrast to how we talk about problems we actually want to fight in our societies like obesity, racism, worker mistreatment by employers, etc. In those situations we never say that people are going to do such things anyways and criminalizing it just makes those who do those crimes more unlikely to change, more unlikely to get back into society, more distrustful of the system, etc. In those situations we spend tons and tons of money at the corporate and the government level trying to teach people these behaviors are wrong and to not engage in them.

Why can't we do that with people who solicit prostitutes?”

"I know this is a novel concept to some on here but prostitution is degrading both to the ‘sex workers’ and their clients."

You seem very confident that this is an indisputable fact. Can you explain to us why paying for sex work and performing sex work are always degrading acts?

This^. And on the other side, let’s jail sex workers. It is surely not degrading/s

> Why can't we do that with people who solicit prostitutes?

We completely agree about the purpose of government.

The government exists to provide education and support for people to escape toxic situations, NOT more LAWS backed by the threat of violence, with over reaching questionable authority to force people to do what a subset of people believe is morally right, based on sensationalized media reporting, whether that's prostitution, drug use, abortion, gun laws, mask usage...etc.

Unless there's unquestionable hard science to make a law over, with data effecting the majority of the population, the federal government should not be involved in a legislative capacity.

There's already an uncountable number of federal laws(you can google it).

We need to err on the side of freedom not safety and morality.